Death by Inches
by deanine
Summary: In the final battle with Thanos, every Avenger played a role in their ultimate victory. Some sacrificed more than others. What if one Avenger didn't make it to the battle, etching a new path forward. Winning was always going to require sacrifice, but sometimes that sacrifice moves around. Endgame fix it, if you like your fix its long and angsty with a bit of horror. MCU/AU
1. Inches

**EARTH 2023 - The Final Battle With Thanos**

Everything seemed to be happening too fast to follow, and Peter couldn't shake the sensation that he was only barely surviving from moment to moment. He didn't decide to jump or kick or punch, instinct alone pulled him forward. It wasn't Peter's first battle, but fighting muggers or even tag teaming against Thanos, bore no resemblance to the sheer chaos of thousands of aliens swarming Earth's heroes.

When Thanos called for a rain of fire on the battle, Peter only just managed to lunge under some flimsy cover, curling around the gauntlet and its dangerous stones. Desperate and terrified, Peter tried to see a way forward through the explosions and Outriders. His shell-shocked brain couldn't see a hole to slip through, the ground literally shaking under him continuously, the pulse weapons striking with no break between them.

In another world and time, a hero would have arrived. Glowing golden, she would have slammed through Thanos' ship twice, bringing it to the ground with her mighty fists. Rallying with the other heroes, she would have taken the gauntlet from Peter and continued the fight forward. In this world and this time, Captain Marvel fought a different battle a half a galaxy away, oblivious to the fight with Thanos and the difference she could have made.

Crouching in his impromptu foxhole, Peter acknowledged that he might have the way forward cradled in his arms. Now he missed many of the discussions of just how dangerous wielding this gauntlet was likely to be, but he wasn't unintelligent and he could feel its power radiating into his flesh even through the cacophonous confusion around him. Thanos wanted to snap his fingers and kill half the universe, well Peter could snap his fingers and end this battle surely?

Partly ignorant and mostly desperate, Peter slid his hand into the gauntlet and his right side caught fire. God, he just wanted to snatch it off and throw it away, but he gritted his teeth and waited until the burning faded from agony to a pain Peter could actually think through. The smart thing would be to snap them to dust, Thanos and all his associates gone in the wind like they had done to half the universe once already, but Peter couldn't quite bring himself to kill. "All right stones, you're all powerful so you better be able to do this my way." Peter snapped his fingers and the burning returned a thousand times worse than before.

Peter pulled the gauntlet off, and cradled his right arm protectively. The earth no longer shuddered and he couldn't hear the overwhelming sounds of battle anymore.

Out of the smoke, a medium sized dog padded forward and licked Peter in the face.

* * *

One second Tony was watching Steve fling Thor's mighty hammer at an indestructible Titan and the next the world shuddered and changed. The hammer struck a man, a simple human, with a bloody detonation. "What the Hell?" The vicious, mindless outriders had vanished, not into dust but into a hoard of puppies, golden retrievers and poodles and chihuahuas. The sentient fighters, the Black Order, had become human men and women, apparently without any extra resistance or strength, judging by how easily they were now being restrained.

"Did you just kill Thanos?" Tony asked. "I mean he has a hammer-sized hole in his chest, but is that really him?"

"He isn't purple, but I think it's him. Someone snapped, changed reality," Steve said. "Who had the gauntlet?"

Tony launched himself back into the air to get a better lay of the land, a sick feeling in his stomach that he knew which hero on the battlefield would have the bright idea to snap the Outriders into puppies. The spaceship that had menaced them from above had vanished, snapped into something or somewhere else perhaps?

"I've got eyes on the gauntlet," Sam announced. "Looks to be secure with Wanda, Pepper, and Spider-Man."

Setting off toward Pepper, Tony patched into her suit privately. "Everyone okay over there?"

"Tony, thank God. We're okay. I don't understand what just happened," Pepper said. "Peter seems to have adopted a dog. Why are there dogs?"

Landing a few feet from his wife, Tony deactivated his nano-armor, allowing it to return to its storage compartment. Pepper followed suit, hugging him and kissing him, obviously beyond relieved to see him. "Is it over?"

"It appears to be." Tony couldn't stop thinking about the damage the gauntlet had done to Bruce and Thanos before him. If Peter had snapped, he was injured. The question was how badly. "Pete, you okay. Let's see your arm."

One of the former outriders, a medium-sized gray dog with a short coat and a stocky, strong frame had settled by Peter, apparently enjoying rhythmic rubbing from the teenager's left hand. "It worked. That was crazy. I'm okay. I feel okay. Just can't get up right now. Give me a minute."

"Let's see." Tony circled around, and tried not to let his expression change. Peter was burned, his right arm folded limply in his lap, the nanites on the right half of his suit, inactive and melted, literally fused into Peter's skin. The burn extended up the right side of his head, one ear literally melted away, but his eyes seemed intact, small mercies. Tony just barely bit back a shout of What the Hell were you thinking? "Okay, don't try to get up. Just stay still. The wizard is a retired surgeon, so I'm going to get him to have look, all right. You're going to be okay."

"Yeah, probably need a doctor, but it doesn't hurt, Mr. Stark. I mean it did, but not now." Peter stopped short of explaining what he had once read about deep burns, that if the nerves were damaged, they didn't hurt. He could hear Tony, all but shouting at the magical one to get him over here. Wanda and Pepper had come closer, shifting around so they could see the damage. Pepper smiled at him stoically, but Wanda just looked horrified. Peter choose to focus on the soft warm creature at his side. "Do you like dogs? She came over to see me. I always wanted a dog, but May said no. Our apartment is too small and it's a lot of responsibility. Do you think she might change her mind if she met this sweet girl?"

"I can't imagine she wouldn't want her. Tell you what, I'll take care of her while you get checked out, Peter. Don't worry about the dog," Pepper offered.

"I am not worried about a thing," Peter lied.

When Dr. Strange stepped through his sparkly orange portal, things started to speed up for Peter again. After a cursory exam, Strange started dictating orders dispassionately. If anyone argued, he would politely threaten them with dire consequences. "Certainly, Stark we can wait for you to find Dr. Cho and get her equipment out of mothballs in a valiant effort to save his arm, or we can get him straight to a burn unit so he doesn't die of septicemia without I.V. antibiotics."

"I didn't say wait. I said don't let anyone cut his arm off until Cho has had a look. Fire up your magic ring and get him to a burn unit. F.R.I.D.A.Y. is locating Dr. Cho. I'll send her along shortly," Tony paused and crouched down to Peter's level. "All right, Strange is taking you to Cornell. I'm going to get a specialist to see about your arm. Mere mortals aren't supposed to mess around with infinity stones, so you've done a number to yourself, but you're going to be okay. Until Cho gets there, do not consent to surgery. They can do whatever else they need, but no surgery, got it?"

"Got it. Mr. Stark, I knew it was a stupid thing to do, but I was pinned down, and no other bright ideas came to mind. Sorry." Peter smiled nervously. "We won though."

"Sure, we did," Tony agreed. It just didn't much feel like winning.

"Are you ready, Peter? I'm going to be very careful," Wanda said, tears shining in her eyes. Using her telekinesis, she gently lifted Peter, so that his position didn't shift and the melted metal would not pull away from his flesh before the doctors were ready. She passed him through Strange's portal and followed without another word.

Tony grabbed Strange's shoulder so he couldn't follow immediately. "So, this is the one, the one timeline that we win. I had to live to help with the time machine, so Peter could snap away our problems?" Tony asked. "You mind saving me the suspense and telling me if the kid is going to be okay, or will that break the timeline too?"

Strange paused and shrugged. "I don't know. To be completely honest, this is not the timeline I was shooting for. The timeline I found had you snapping away our problems in a dustier and less flea-bitten fashion. Not sure how we got off track for that, but I was dust for five years. Something likely shifted then. If you'll excuse me." Strange stepped through his own portal, barking orders at the other doctors before the orange circle had even finished closing.

Tony paused, unsure what to do next. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had already located the revived Dr. Cho and was briefing her en route to Ithaca. Peter was in hospital. The two surviving members of the black order were under Steve and Sam's custody. A fluffy red Pomeranian flounced past him and Tony couldn't help but sputter a slightly hysterical laugh. "We need to call the A.S.P.C.A."

"Already done," Pepper replied. Hunkered down next to the squat little pit bull Peter had been petting, she laughed too. "I told Peter we would take care of this one for him."

"Yeah, we are not having anything to do with the reformed alien monster dogs. I'd be more comfortable if you stepped away from that one actually." Tony gestured for her to come.

"We're not leaving the dog, so we're clear. I promised the dog would be fine." Pepper hoisted the girl up and held her sort of awkwardly, half over her shoulder. "Let's go."

"Seriously? Fine, give me the dog. If anyone is getting eaten by the alien attack dog, it's going to be me." Tony sighed and slid the dog into his own arms where it licked his face and wagged its tail before settling its head on his shoulder.

Pepper kept a hand on Tony as they walked, the reality of what they had done hitting her. "We survived. We did it."

"It just cost Peter an arm and an ear, maybe a leg." Tony smiled, a bitter half-hearted expression. "I know, it's better than a pile of dust, but God damn it. It was not the plan."

"You've always done your best work when you had to improvise," Pepper said. "We are going to be fine and so is the kid."

* * *

Dr. Cho mostly enjoyed her work as the Avenger's primary physician. The job had opened doors and provided research opportunities that her colleagues could only dream about. It also left her sometimes in undocumented territory, dealing with unique biological systems and unusual illnesses. Today she had been hit by a lot; not only had she been dead for five years, but before she could even wrap her head around that, she had been summoned to treat Spider-Man (a nice example of one of those unique biological systems).

He had suffered extensive burns, particularly to his right arm. Tony Stark ordered her to use her cradle tech to save the arm. He didn't qualify the order, not save the arm if you can, or save it if it's salvageable. Cho didn't argue with him. Stark asked because she promised him miracles years ago when first explaining her revolutionary technology, and for the most part she had delivered.

Cho found her patient under very competent care, if not ideal condition. "Hello Peter, I'm doctor Cho. I need to examine you."

"Hi Dr. Cho. Mr. Stark said you might be able to fix me up." Peter stared over at the wall, determinedly not looking while she poked and prodded. The other doctors had made their opinions clear, unguarded conversations held outside his door where a regular patient wouldn't hear. Everyone kept discussing amputation, like it was the only option and maybe it was, but not until Dr. Cho said so. "You print living tissue, right? Will you be able to print my arm back into proper shape?"

"We are going to do everything we can. It's time to go to surgery. It is time to consent," Cho said. "I don't have privileges here, but I will be in the room every step. We have to get this metal out of your tissue so we can see what's there to work with."

Peter didn't question that he was able to sign off on his own procedure when he was only fifteen. The implications of going dusty and returning had not become apparent to the infrastructure in hospitals yet and his date of birth made him legally twenty.

In the room with him, Dr. Cho exuded calm, empathic optimism. Once in the hall with her colleagues, it was all business. She asserted herself as the expert on enhanced humans and Peter's primary care giver. "He's enhanced, mutated, drug doses will likely have to be adjusted on the fly. You need to perform a full crossmatch before giving blood products to ensure there won't be a reaction. I'm happy to consult on the process, but you should bring in someone with experience, no interns or residents, anesthesia attendings only. This young man just fought Thanos with the Avengers. He deserves our best effort. Which of you will be the lead surgeon? Walk with me so I can give you a run down of my strategy to maximize the tissue left after your amputation so he can have the most functional prosthetic possible."

Peter understood why doctors didn't tell their patients the unvarnished truth, but he sort of appreciated the chance to know what they really believed, even if it wasn't what he wanted to hear.

Sitting quietly in the corner, Wanda hadn't made any effort to really talk with the doctors or him. She met his eyes when he looked her way and smiled thinly. Her whole body screamed of tightly wound tension. "You know, you don't have to stay here," Peter said. "Dr. Strange had to check on his sanctum. I mean, you probably have people or things to see to as well."

"Not really, my _people_ are mostly all gone. You're an Avenger, so that makes you the closest thing I have to people. If your family or someone else gets here, I'll go. Until then, you're stuck with me," Wanda said. "How do you feel?"

"You'd think I'd be hurting, but I don't much. I might be a little, um, nervous. They're about to cut my arm off." Peter resolutely did not look at the arm in question.

"That isn't what the doctors said. They're going to try to save it," Wanda said.

"Yeah, that's what they said to my face. You should hear what they say out there in the hall." Peter blinked rapidly, determined not to cry. "People were going to die, billions and billions, and I'm being a baby about an arm. Tell me to man up. Mr. Stark made me an Avenger and I've got to get ahold of myself."

"No, you don't have to get ahold of yourself, not for the next little while." Wanda gestured with one hand and the door glowed faintly red. "You were brave and strong and you saved everyone you could. If you want to cry about your arm, I won't let anyone in until you're ready to be brave again."

* * *

Tony didn't go to see Peter in the hospital right away. He found May and got her there by day two, so it wasn't like the kid was alone. Peter had his family and the best doctors money could buy. Besides, there were things Ironman had to do, time machines to repair mainly. So, he worked steadily for a week, lingering over a rebuild that he could have hammered out in a day before finally calling Dr. Cho for an update. She thanked him for his concern, quoted H.I.P.P.A. rules (bullshit doctor's ethics) to him and refuse to give details. He might be paying her salary but if he wanted to know how Peter was doing, he would need to ask the kid himself. In response Tony had sent F.R.I.D.A.Y. to hack the hospital and copy Peter's medical record. It would be a violation of the kid's privacy to read the record, but he'd had him GPS tracked and recorded from the day he gave him his first suit. Keeping Peter safe had always come before his privacy.

In the end Tony read the medical record, beginning to end, every lab number, every detail of every surgical note. When he was done, he closed the file, added it to his desktop and tapped a command in for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to keep it updated. Without saying a word, he smashed his tablet on the lab bench, bashing it into an expensive pile of glass and electronics. F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted his tantrum, with a simple interjection. "Sir, you're bleeding, should I send for assistance."

"No." Tony wrapped a rag around his lacerated palm and trudged upstairs. Pepper would not be there. She was busy coordinating Stark Industries efforts to assist the displaced, routing living modules and food and clean water to where it was most needed. She was the right woman for the job.

Tony didn't feel like working on the time machine in his garage at the moment. He pulled on a sweater and struck out for the park. He just wanted to see his daughter and not think about imperfect resurrections or have anyone tell him to look on the bright side. It wasn't a real public park Morgan played at. Tony built it for her, sand box and monkey bars and swings. It was too dangerous to take his girl to a real park where the press and people who hated him could find her. He tried not to think about how isolated Morgan really was, growing up safe, but without a circle of peers in which to find friends.

Happy nodded to him in greeting and Tony joined him on the bench, watching Morgan dangle from the monkey bars. "Hey boss, how's the new time machine coming along?" Happy asked.

"Swimmingly. I might have hacked the hospital and read Peter's medical record," Tony added.

"You know it would be easier and more legal to call the kid or just visit. I mean, yeah, you've got to build the time machine, but it's a time machine. You can take your time, right?" Happy cast a side eye at his boss. "Seriously though, how's Peter?"

"Recovering. They cut off his arm. His leg may have to go too, and Dr. Cho's lovely tissue printing machine is having a hard time printing spider-kid." Tony crossed his arms over his chest, still frustrated at the news.

"I'm not saying all that doesn't suck. It sucks. But Peter knows a fellow with the resources to provide him with some very nice prosthetics, and missing an arm is a damn sight better than dust on the ground. That said, if you're angry about it, I wonder how the teenager is dealing with his situation?" Happy asked.

Tony tried to imagine how he would handle losing a limb, maybe two, at fifteen, and he shook his head. "The kid's not me, more mature than I was at that age, but you're right, a visit from his point man is probably in order. So, take the jet and visit the kid. I've got Morgan."

Making no attempt to hide his incredulous expression, Happy slouched and shook his head. He had helped Tony avoid unpleasant personal situations over the years, mostly making sure he didn't accidentally try a one-night stand with the same girl twice or have to talk too much with fans while roaming the world. It was the job. "Fine, but are you going to tell me why you're avoiding him? I need to know what to say when he asks where the Hell you are."

"Tell him I'm rebuilding the time machine so we don't destroy the universe. He'll understand." Tony used his most charming expression, but Happy didn't look any less disapproving. "How do I explain this? We are not living the one in fourteen million timelines Strange cryptically hinted at back on Titan. In that timeline, I was apparently supposed to snap my fingers and end things. It was my job, and I let a kid do it. I'm really not ready to view the consequences of that fuck-up in person yet. Does that help you figure out what to tell him? Because if I knew what to tell him, I'd visit myself."

From the top of the monkey bars, Morgan waved and both men waved back. Happy didn't say anything for a while, just quietly digesting Tony's statements. "So, if you'd done the hard part and snapped that magic doohickey, you really think you'd be in a hospital now, recovering?" Happy asked. "I've seen Hulk's arm. Old men, regular humans like us, you'd be dead. I don't think Peter would have traded your life for an arm or if it comes down to it, an arm and a leg. That kid thinks you hung the moon."

"You don't have to tell me, Peter's always been a little delusional when it comes to _Ironman_. Just check on him." Tony strolled out toward Morgan, a tight smile on his face. Without looking over his shoulder, he called, "Thanks Happy. Bye."

* * *

The medical professionals at Cornell's burn unit were positive, calm and empathetic. They seemed to know what Peter was feeling before he did, always quick to tell him it was okay to be angry or sad or depressed that it was human to mourn the loss of a limb. When they explained about his infection and that they couldn't control it because of his compromised leg, Peter argued that they just needed to give it time. He let them take his arm, but now they just weren't trying. The burn on his leg wasn't nearly so bad as his arm.

"May, I can heal. It just needs time and they're giving me antibiotics. I need my legs, both of them. So, I don't consent to the surgery. I won't consent. They can't take it if I don't consent."

May pulled back the bed sheets and made him look at his dusky, grayish toes, puffy, from fluid retention and lack of circulation. "Peter, your life is more important than a leg, and it's not your call. You're fifteen, and I already consented for you."

"No, I'm legally an adult. It's 2023." Peter wiped at the tears on his cheeks and snatched the sheet back, hiding his failing appendage.

"You're fifteen. I signed an affidavit to that effect and it will officially be my call as soon as the doctors sort out how to handle kids who spent the last five years paused."

He might be down an arm and most of a leg, but Peter was still Spider-Man and he all but threw himself out of bed. There were not restraints in this hospital strong enough to hold him if he really wanted to go. Ignoring the pins and needles agony of his mostly dead leg, he used the IV stand as a crutch to push past May. The well-meaning doctors could keep their very sharp scalpels to themselves. Peter didn't quite make it to the hall. On the other side of the door, Wanda had returned to visit again, a coffee and croissant in hand. She looked between the overwrought teenager and his frazzled aunt, and she raised her free hand to cup his cheek. Wanda reached straight into Peter's mind and dialed his emotions down until they were a vague whisper.

Now that he wasn't fighting, the two women were able to guide him back to bed. "I know it's the right thing to do," Peter said. "I know."

"What was that?" May asked.

"One of my tricks," Wanda said. "I just pushed his emotions down. They aren't gone and they won't stay down long, but if he fights us and the doctors, he's strong enough to hurt someone, himself most especially. So, they want to go back to surgery today, I take it?"

"As soon as possible," May said.

"They don't have much choice," Peter said dispassionately, "The infection is not better and there aren't any pulses below my knee. My right leg is just a sack of bacteria that's going to kill me. You're wrong about me hurting my doctors. I wouldn't have hurt anyone. I couldn't even kill Thanos. I just turned him and his army into something a lot less dangerous." Peter smiled to himself. "You know, technically I turned myself into something a lot less dangerous too. One arm. One leg. It's funny, isn't it?"

May sank into a plastic chair and shook her head. "Funny is not the word that comes to mind." She presented him with another copy of the consent form and Peter signed it awkwardly with his left hand.

"I expect he will be apoplectically angry with both of us when the emotions come back," Wanda said. "He's going to feel betrayed. Do you want me to undo it now? We could try to talk him around more organically."

"No, I can accept angry. They're still trying to figure out who's legally supposed to be in charge here. Chronologically he's an adult, but biologically he's a minor. They're in the process of convening an ethics board to decide. You sincerely may have just saved his life. I'll tell the nurses that we're ready for them to prep him. Thank you."

Alone together for a few moments, Wanda sipped her coffee and nibbled her croissant, while Peter just gazed blankly out the window.

"I'm not stupid." Peter looked her way, his expression still serene. "I know the doctors are correct and my aunt is just trying to help me. You don't have to tell me that I'm more than an arm and a leg. It's not a failure of comprehension."

"No one thinks you're stupid, Peter," Wanda agreed. "Our emotions can make us, delusional, stubborn. Most of the Avengers stood together and decided not to destroy the mind stone because it was going to cost a life. We let our emotions steer us to make an ideological choice that in its own way cost us the first battle in our war with Thanos. We all lose the fight to be realistic and logical sometimes. You have back up today that isn't going to let you die while your heart is trying to steer you to self destruction."

"You shouldn't feel too bad about trying to save your friend. There were plenty of mistakes in that first fight with Thanos. We almost got the gauntlet off him on Titan, but one of the other guys had an emotional meltdown and spoiled it," Peter said. "It's good you didn't just leave when May got here. I probably won't come around to feeling it for a while when my emotions dial back in, so thanks for not letting me die."

Wishing she could stamp her own emotions down the way she had Peter's, Wanda shrugged. Where did she have to go, really? "I'll try to remember that you understand our efforts underneath it all, when you're throwing bedpans at us later for not letting you work through your emotions before the surgery."

* * *

Happy did not arrive at Peter's hospital room with any traditional hospital stay gifts. Instead of flowers or balloons, he had a New York pizza, cold after the plane ride, but it had to be ten times tastier than anything the kid and his aunt were getting as institutional food. He knocked and waited a couple of seconds before coming in. "Pizza delivery," he announced.

May looked his way and rose to greet him, but Peter was staring out his window and didn't even glance toward the door. "It's a little cold," Happy apologized.

Obviously waiting for Peter to take the lead, May only answered when it became clear, he had no intention of acknowledging his visitor. "Hi Happy," May said. "You're a lifesaver. I'm not a great cook, but the food here makes me look like a gourmand."

"Doesn't matter how classy the hospital is, the food always stinks." Happy dropped his pizza onto the table that extended over Peter's bed and popped open the box. He pulled a cheese and pepperoni covered slice for himself and settled into a chair. "Hey Peter, it's good to see you. You look good. How do you feel?" Ignoring the obvious absence of his right arm and leg, Happy tried to keep the conversation normal. Aside from a shift in expression, Peter didn't even dignify his question with a glance. Happy sighed. What he wouldn't have done to get Peter to dial down the talking five years ago? He could see that May was torn between scolding Peter's rudeness and not wanting to make things worse. Fortunately, Happy had learned a few things about cracking the silent treatment over the years with Tony and Morgan. You had to say something outrageous enough that silence wasn't an option. Just yesterday morning, he told Morgan that the blue little pony toy was obviously better than the yellow or pink and her mid-morning sulk turned into a comprehensive lecture on the pros and cons of various pony powers. "If you lay there and waste the best pizza in Queens, you're going to offend me."

Peter glanced at the pizza and then back to Happy, a small war happening behind his eyes. "I don't know why you'd try to pick a fight. That is not the best pizza in Queens."

Happy snorted and took a large bite of his slice. "Kid you've been away for five years. Pizza shops have opened and closed and you never even got a chance to sample their pies. This is the current champion on your home turf. Prove me wrong."

The kid glanced down at his missing dominant arm before snatching a slice with his left and taking a bite. He made a face and shook his head. "Unless Dani's closed, there is no way this is the best."

"Queen's isn't really my borough. I'm not sure if Dani's is still open. A lot of places folded because of the decimation. You get out of here and figure out what has become of the Queen's pizza scene, and I'll take your recommendation next time." Happy folded his slice and set about destroying it. He couldn't help noticing that Peter had set his slice down with only the single bite gone. "It's not your favorite, fine, but surely it's edible."

Peter shrugged. "Nauseated. I think it's the new antibiotics."

"Or the infection," May added, quietly.

"Right." Peter nodded, looking out the window instead of at May. "The infection that cutting my leg off was going to make manageable. Oh well, I guess that didn't work."

"It helped," May said. "Did you hear Dr. Cho post op? The leg was gone, dead, and Spider-Man or not, you were not ever going to heal it."

"I guess we'll never know, since we didn't even try." Neither of them was shouting, the argument moving back and forth, hissed and angry, a rutted disagreement trapped in a pattern neither were yet willing to change. "Happy, it was really nice of you to bring food and visit, but I'm not an asset for you to manage for Mr. Stark anymore. I can't even tie my shoes, correction, shoe at the moment. So, you don't need to waste your time. Okay?"

"Why wouldn't you be Spider-Man anymore? Hell, if Barnes can function the way he does with that soviet era metal arm, do you really think Tony Stark won't have you climbing walls again once you're out of this hospital? Please kid, the injury is not going to sideline you unless you want it to." Happy shrugged. "And it would be okay if you want it to."

Peter cast a searching look at May.

"I already lost that argument," May said. "I won't try to stop you being Spider-Man. Whatever you may think at the moment, I'm not trying to ruin your life."

"I know." Peter looked back to Happy. "So, are you still in asset management? You're obviously here managing me."

"I'm offended. I'm visiting an old friend, and I got promoted again thank you very much. You are looking at Tony Stark's head of babysitting." When Peter covered his mouth to stop from laughing, Happy grinned so the kid would know that he wasn't offended. "I insisted on a more masculine title, but it's what I do now. Did you know Tony and Pepper went ahead and got married, finally had a kid?"

"We heard. Some of the nurses like to gossip about celebrities. Mr. Stark doesn't trust anyone more than you, Happy. I'm not surprised you're who he trusts with his kid." Abruptly Peter was scrambling. "Save the pizza." He pushed the tray table away and cast a quick wistful look at the bathroom just six feet away that he had no hope of reaching, before vomiting into a basin by his bedside. Old and new arguments forgotten, May was at his side, wiping his face with a damp towel. "The new nausea med, I'm not giving it five stars," Peter groaned.

"That must be a serious antibiotic," Happy said. He set the rest of the pizza outside so that the smell couldn't make the kid any sicker. "Sorry for causing that. Can I get anything?"

"No, the pizza was a great idea. He needs to eat. He can't heal if he doesn't eat." May hit the call button. "The nausea is the problem. They're going to have to try something else."

Peter started to heave again, and May gestured for Happy to go and give him some semblance of privacy. "Kid, I'm going to step out. You've got my number. Call me if you need anything. I'll be visiting again when you're feeling better."

Standing out in the hall, Happy had the lurching feeling that things were not actually under control here. Very good doctors had treated and evaluated and amputated, but Peter wasn't ready for a fancy prosthetic and some rehabilitation. Happy pulled out his phone and started walking. "Voicemail, boss? Really? Call me back. I'm worried about the kid."

* * *

Bruce Banner had not spent much of his life as a picture of stability or mental health. So, the irony was not lost on him that he seemed to be most frequently called on to handle various Avengers in mental or emotional crisis lately. First, he had been sent to coax Thor out of retirement, and now he was out to help Tony finish the time machine, a job that should have taken him at most two days but had now drug on ten. Whatever was holding up the process, Bruce intended to finish it. He made a promise to return those stones and it was time to see it through.

He found Tony in his home lab, daughter safely ensconced in a play-safe corner while her father manipulated a three-dimensional model in front of him. "Hey Bruce, grab a seat. There's a reinforced one over by the mass spectrometer."

"Thanks, what are ya' working on? That doesn't look like the time tunnel." Bruce rolled the especially strong stool down to sit comfortably and have a look. "Is that a neural interface?"

"You like it? I'm working on a prototype for a new prosthetic. I'll have to talk some vibranium out of our friends in Wakanda but it's for a good cause. What do you think?" Tony asked.

"It's brilliant. Have you been working on this instead of the time tunnel? I can reconstruct it if you want to focus on this particular project. I know it's important too. How's Spider-Man doing?" Bruce patted his own injured arm in sympathy.

"He's alive." Tony frowned. "And I've got the time tunnel; it's finished. I've just not completed the last bit of wiring."

"Okay, I'll handle that," Bruce said. "Point me to it."

"No." Tony looked over to where Morgan was playing and smiled so she wouldn't know anything was wrong. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. noise cancel the baby for a bit." The play area reconfigured and children's music started playing, ensuring that the adults could speak in relative privacy.

"We are not sending those stones anywhere until I know for damn certain that Peter Parker isn't going to die from his injuries." Tony held a hand up, stopping Bruce from speaking. "I know you can't snap again and Thor is off planet and there's no guarantee that Cap could survive the thing either, but if it comes down to it, I'll snap it myself and set him right, okay?"

"Oh Tony, you know you can't do that. Besides the fact that it would be literal suicide, you were there when Strange explained this after the battle. The stones' destruction in this timeline was just as important as Thanos's. Every time they're used in concert, it rips at the fabric of reality. If we keep ripping, it will shatter."

Tony shifted the overhead holographic display so that pages of a medical record appeared. "Reality will have to handle one more small rip because Dr. Cho and a hospital full of specialists can't handle an infection. In their defense, it's a bad bug. It won't grow in vitro. They've tried every media there is. It won't grow in any of the animal models either not rats or pigs or monkeys. She even tried infecting spiders. It's there." Tony expanded a microscopic image of a bacterium floating among red blood cells. "They've described it. Acid fast, gram positive, rod shaped, but they can't actually identify it and they can't kill it. Since the only place it appears to exist and grow is Peter's blood, they're having to experiment on him, trying different cocktails of meds, hoping for a response. Nothing has worked. They cut his damn leg off, not because of the gauntlet's burns, those were healing. The bacteria settled into his joints in that leg where things were already angry and inflamed and congested and it destroyed it, in hours."

"That's sad, terrible even, but Tony it doesn't change things. The stones can't be our magic McGuffin that fixes every problem. We need to send them home. Then you and me, we'll go and work on the kid's bad infection. We'll do it the right way, with our heads." Bruce pointed to the little girl who had climbed above the configuration of her play area so that she could hear the adults. There was too much of her father in her, clever and curious, not to see a way around their attempt at privacy. "Hi there little lady." He turned back to Tony. "We can't rip casually at reality again. It's too dangerous. You know that and you need to come to terms with it."

It was hard to argue for risking reality, even if the risk was small, with his daughter staring at him. "You are not supposed to climb on those." Tony walked over and scooped Morgan up. "Fine Bruce, you handle the time tunnel. If I can't have one more snap, then I've got more important things to do."

* * *

It wasn't easy for Wanda to keep visiting Peter, but she couldn't seem to stay away. She touched base with the others, answering their calls when they came. Assuring Steve and Clint and the rest that she was okay, just busy, just helping where she could. At least once a day she stopped by with coffee and sometimes a pastry. For the first three days after his leg surgery, Peter refused to talk with her, and she hadn't pushed. She sipped her coffee and passed a bit of time quietly those days.

Her family, neither her parents or her brother had ever been quiet in anger. They yelled and gesticulated, but were never actually violent with one another. And if they were loud and rowdy in an argument, they were usually quick to cool and forgive. Peter's quiet anger was different. It lasted longer and when it thawed, wariness remained between them.

Today, Wanda had just her coffee in hand. She could see May down the hall talking to the doctors. Were they far enough down the hall that Peter couldn't hear them? Wanda hadn't told anyone Peter's secret that he could hear their whispered, frank conversations held surreptitiously in the hallways. She knocked and paused a moment before stepping in. Peter didn't greet her, but it wasn't a return to the silent treatment. He lay, mostly still in sleep, his eyes jerking rapidly under their lids, dreaming.

It was tempting to peek at his dream, to make sure it was a peaceful rest and push it toward such if it wasn't. Wanda made herself sip and wait, certain that Peter wouldn't want her tinkering further in his mind. When her coffee was gone and more than an hour had passed, Wanda realized that Peter was no longer asleep, but he didn't look well or rested.

"Why are you always here? We aren't even friends. Every day you drink coffee and chat with my aunt while I disappear over here in the corner an inch at a time." Pale and sweaty, Peter glared. "May is never far, and Happy even came back yesterday. He brought another pizza, my favorite toppings, but I couldn't even stand to smell it. Happy is really worried. He keeps Calling Mr. Stark out in the hall, but it always goes to voicemail. I wish Mr. Stark would call. He can't actually come. I know, saving the universe is demanding."

Wanda realized quickly that Peter's fever was back up and that he wasn't completely lucid, but there was truth in his ramblings. "You're going to get better, Peter. You aren't disappearing. Stark has responsibilities, but I'm sure he'll be here in person as soon as he's able."

"I was right handed. I was going to write Mr. Stark a note." Peter glared at his left hand. "Failed at that. He told me if I got myself killed that it would be on him, but I need him to know it's not. I tried to tell him that on Titan but it was so scary dying and so fast."

Wanda moved closer to press the nurse's call button and Peter's too hot hand grabbed her wrist. "Dying is a lot slower here. It's still pretty scary. Wanda, I know we're not friends, but will you tell him for me. Please. Promise me."

"Okay, Peter," Wanda agreed. "I'll tell him."

* * *

Tony spent the flight into Ithaca bombarding Dr. Cho with questions and thoughts, ideas on how to come after the strange infection trying to kill Peter. He had to make a quick detour to leave Morgan with her mother, but it barely added an hour to the trip. By the time he was on the ground and riding an elevator up to Peter's floor, Tony was irate at Cho's failure to respond to even one of his messages.

The nurse's station was deserted, but Tony could read numbers on the wall and knew where he was headed. Tablet in hand, Tony had vague plans to maybe show Peter the tech he had already planned to replace his arm and leg. He knocked on the door and stepped into a pitiful tableau. It wasn't that he hadn't prepared for Peter's injuries. Tony read every line of the kid's medical record.

But that was a stranger sleeping with an oxygen mask over his face. He had never seen Peter quiet or still, so pale he almost seemed to disappear into the sheets. A smell hung in the air that Tony remembered too well, sour and sharp, a festering wound. He'd nearly died of infection while he was marooned in space. Only Nebula's not quite tender care pulled him through.

Curled in a chair at Peter's bedside, May caught his eye. She raised a single finger to her mouth and waved him back out the door. Soundless in her sock feet, she followed him into the hall. Once the door was shut, she started talking. "There's a coffee machine around the corner. If you have time, you're welcome to have a cup with me. Peter hasn't slept much for the last few days, and I don't want to wake him. Happy has been very clear about how busy you are saving the time and space whatever, so the visit is appreciated."

"He doesn't look good," Tony said. "I'll be honest, I'm a little disappointed in the good doctors' efforts, so I'm here to lend a hand."

May poured two styrofoam cups of coffee and settled into a hospital chair. "If you can help, wonderful. Forgive me if I'm not completely up on your resume, but I missed the part where you went to medical school."

"I dabble." Call it his ego, but Tony had to believe if he attacked the problem there was an answer, one that wouldn't risk their universe. "I won't get in the real doctors' way. You have my word. With that in mind, I'm going to find the pathology lab, see if I can't find Dr. Cho and get to work on this problem."

"Wait, we have to wake Peter first. He wants to see you. When his fever gets too high, you are the only thing he talks about." May abandoned her beverage and pulled Tony with her back to the hospital room.

"You said he needs his sleep." As much as he wanted to help, Tony had been relieved to skip the reunion with Peter until the medical problems were closer to all solved, and he could properly show off the prosthetic he'd designed to make him whole, but May wasn't going to let him get away clean.

"I think he needs this more," May said. She shuffled him in but didn't follow.

Tony considered just standing there and not waking the kid, but Peter was looking up at him already, the oxygen mask pulled down around his neck. "What are you doing here, sir? Happy said you were fixing the timeline."

"I delegated that bit. Could use some backup and thought I'd see if Spider-Man was feeling better," Tony said.

"Sorry, the glove whammy was a little harsher than I planned on. Give me a week or two to get my bearings back." Peter had to slide the mask back up and just breath for a bit. "I've been thinking about prosthetics. Weird I know and I had some crazy ideas. It's all about the nerves. You can build an arm and a leg. It isn't even that hard, but getting the kind of enervation to make it seamless, that's the trick. I know a little about nerve impulses, AP biology, but not enough. I need a tablet or a phone, so I can read and plan. May loaned me her phone but," Peter rolled his eyes, "it's a really terrible phone."

Tony couldn't help smiling, encouraged that Peter was thinking about the future. Of course, Peter was designing his own prosthetics. That was actually perfect. "Are you trying to talk me out of my tablet?" Tony asked.

"You gave me a multimillion-dollar suit before we went to space, so yeah I'm thinking I can talk you out of a tablet at this stage of our..." Peter faltered, unsure of the right word.

"Friendship," Tony supplied. "Teenagers are so mercenary these days. I need this tablet, kid. I'm off to the pathology lab to quiz your doctor and help her brainstorm, but I'll have Happy grab you a little something so you can doodle in all your copious spare time." Tony realized that Peter's eyes were drifting shut despite his best efforts. "You need to sleep."

Peter jerked straighter. "I know, just, I don't know if it's all the drugs, but I'm having the worst dreams. A thousand spiders eating me, crawling around inside me."

"That's not dark at all. Shouldn't you like spiders or something. Aren't they your spirit animal?" Tony asked, folding his arms in front of his chest.

"A spider bit me when I was fourteen and I got freaky powers in lieu of a rash. I have a healthy respect for spiders. They aren't cuddly." As hard as he was fighting sleep, Peter's breathing evened and he drifted back under.

Tony reached out a hand, tempted to brush the hair back off his brow, but he didn't want to wake the kid up. "Try to have good dreams, Peter. While you're at it, give me a little time to figure this out. No dying okay?"

* * *

Peter had never been the best at taking orders, and Tony didn't even get twenty-four hours before things began to spiral out of control. It was hard to say what had done more damage when the end came, the infection or the medicine they pumped in to try and fight it. May watched the doctors run their code from the corner of the room, her hands folded together under her chin. They took turns pounding on Peter's chest, pumping air through the tube in his mouth, a very finely choreographed dance that required few words between them. She watched in silence as thirty minutes that might as well have been years, passed in aggressive but controlled battle for a body that no longer had the strength to beat its own heart. When the doctors stopped and the team stepped away, May shook her head in denial. "Please, don't give up."

The doctor who had run the code turned to her, visibly startled at her presence. May had worked in hospitals for a good portion of her adult life. She knew it wasn't anyone's policy to allow family to watch the grim procedure that was an attempted resuscitation. A nurse should have noticed her and escorted her out early on, but May had been quiet and let them work, only now speaking at the end. A silent conversation passed between the doctor and nursing staff with a series of looks and gestures. "Another round epi, resume compressions," the doctor ordered. One of the nurses came to her side, to take her away, and May didn't fight her. She didn't want to watch what came next. People didn't come back after thirty minutes of fruitless CPR; when the doctor stopped again it would be the last time.

"You're his aunt, right? I'm so sorry you had to watch that. Is there someone I can call to wait with you?"

They didn't deposit her with other families to wait, no death notifications happened in private whenever possible. May sank quietly onto a small, comfortable sofa and shook her head. There was no one to call, no one for her to grab hold of, to lean on. Like it was all she had, May clung to the remnants of her composure. There was technically still hope until the doctor walked through that door and told her that her little family was down to one member.

May couldn't say how long it was before the door opened again, but it wasn't the doctor who came through. Happy looked like he had seen a ghost, and if he had tried to walk into Peter's room, he sort of had. "May? What happened?" He sat next to her and she grabbed his hand in a tight grip.

"He arrested. They are trying to get him back." May held onto Happy like he might save her from drowning. She let him comfort her with assurances about how strong Peter was and how good the doctors were, but May knew what she had walked out of in that hospital room, her already dead nephew being pounded and poked for no purpose but her desperate need for it not to be true.

When the doctor finally did come, May lost hold of her emotions sobbing uncontrollably through his explanations about septic shock and cardiopulmonary damage. "I'm very sorry, but despite our best efforts, your nephew died."

* * *

**The End of the Beginning**

The friendly gray dog Pepper had insisted on officially taking home now that Peter would never be able to reclaim it had spent approximately five minutes in the safe, steel kennel Tony bought for it. Morgan had taken one look at the happy, licking, tail-wagging monstrosity and made her first non-adult friend. Tony watched as his daughter dressed the beast in one of her princess outfits, wig and crown and pink sparkles. The dog sat still and steady, the only sign of life, a gentle tail wag. "Wow, I've never seen anything quite that fabulous."

Tony gladly let his daughter pull him along for her make-believe game. Stuffed Garfield was cast as the evil Queen, and Morgan wanted to be Ironman, Princess Puppy's hero.

In the real world, the press release was due out today. Pepper would stand in front of a room full of journalists and explain their ultimate resolution of the situation with Thanos. She would also be memorializing a couple of Avengers to the public. She had tried to get Tony to handle that part, if not for Natasha then for Peter at least, but Tony refused.

He just couldn't handle the world right now.

People were grateful, almost reverential to him and the other Avengers. It was maddening. Tony had risked his life, fought the good fight and saved billions. Great for them and he was glad to have helped, but he hadn't really taken that risk so much for those strangers. Their death was on Thanos, and Tony could have lived with that, but Peter was his responsibility, his protégé, his kid before he had a kid. Every God bless you and thank you was a reminder that Peter Parker was dead, that all the effort and sacrifice and risk hadn't paid off for him.

Paying Peter back with little penances was all Tony could think to do now. May had lost the last of her family, her job and her home, so Tony stepped in and helped every way she would allow and from behind the scenes in some ways she definitely wouldn't have. Peter received comfort from the reformed monster dog on the battlefield, so Tony had let it join the family. He even made it a point to have Happy keep tabs on Peter's small group of friends as they recovered from the blip, all things the kid would have handled himself if he could.

For about the seven-hundredth time today his phone rang without him paying it any mind. F.R.I.D.A.Y. would interrupt if it was life or death AND something that someone else couldn't handle for him. "Dr. Banner calling, boss. He indicated in his most recent message that there was a problem with the SS-09 protocol. Should I call him back?"

Tony stopped himself from teaching Morgan a new curse word just barely. They had devised the SS (super soldier) protocols years ago to outline how they would securely handle biological waste produced by the enhanced Avengers. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure when you were blocking rogue organizations like Hydra from cloning a super-soldier army. They had invoked SS-05 at Peter's hospitalization and SS-09 at his death. "Has the press conference already happened?"

"Wrapped up fifteen minutes ago, boss. Dr. Banner is calling again."

Peter's secret identity had been public for fifteen minutes and someone had already tried to steal his body? Hopefully Bruce defenestrated them. "Answer it. Bruce? Who breached protocol?"

"Thank God, Tony, you need to get over here. I can't explain what's happening but I need backup. I sent Dr. Cho away. If things escalate, she wouldn't be able to defend herself. How fast can you get here?" Bruce asked.

"It's going to take a bit. Happy is still on Parker duty, guarding May until the dust settles from the press conference. Pepper won't be back until later. Give me a better idea of what's happening. Are you under attack? I have a few thousand drones I can send immediately."

"You're still not letting anyone but Happy help you two with Morgan? Tony, isolation isn't healthy for anyone, especially a child. Look never mind, just have F.R.I.D.A.Y. send you images from the cooler. You have closed camera in there. Dr. Cho and I were going to start Peter's post mortem when things got weird. I sealed the room."

"Weird? F.R.I.D.A.Y. get me a feed of the safe house cooler. Start the footage when Banner and Cho entered and move forward at one and a half speed from there." It was foolish to feel hopeful about something happening with Peter's corpse, but the kid hadn't handled spider bites conventionally. Maybe he didn't die by everyone else's pattern either. "If this is an elaborate zombie joke, I'm already not amused," Tony muttered under his breath.

Tony noticed the weird before Banner or Cho in the recording. They were too busy washing their hands and getting gloved up to see it start. A single spider, small and gray crawled out of Peter's mouth, around the ET tube left in place by the hospital. He was the first of many, not just scrambling from his mouth but also from his ears and the wounds on his side. In just a few short minutes, Peter's body was concealed under a writhing blanket of arachnids. In the background, Banner scooped up a visibly panicked Dr. Cho and fled the room, sealing the door against the infestation's escape.

"Tony, did you see it? What the Hell is happening?" Bruce asked. "I thought you said this kid got his powers from some experimental lab spider gone rogue. That's not natural, like horror movie of the week not natural."

"I don't know what's happening there either. Give me fifteen minutes and I'll call you back." Tony strode to the kitchen, where a long list of carefully vetted child care providers had been compiled by Happy. Was he really going to do this? Tony chose the first on the list and dialed. "Hi, is this Kinder-Kare? Yes, good, I've been paying for my five-year-old to have access to your service since she was three. Yes, Stark, that's the one. We've not been in yet and I was hoping to leave her with you until her mother gets home in a couple of hours. She'll have a dog with her. It's vaccinated. Look this is an emergency. I'll pay extra. Whatever you want."

Tony clipped Princess into her collar and lead, not bothering to take off the dog's dress. He also equipped Morgan with multiple fail-safe devices in case of attack or attempted kidnapping. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., your only job while Morgan is at the day care is to monitor her and protect her. Understood?"

"Yes Boss," F.R.I.D.A.Y. confirmed.

Getting Morgan settled and bribing the day care to take his very well-dressed pit bull as her plus one took time. So, it was more than an hour from Bruce's call before Tony was touching down at the safe house and headed for the very secure morgue in its basement.

It wasn't just Bruce waiting for him. Tony's least favorite former surgeon stood, grimly staring through the window into their cooler. "Okay, who called the magician," Tony snapped.

Strange smirked and shook his head. "No one called me Stark. I'm just doing my job. When one of the thirteen dark gods open a portal to this planet and extends its hairy leg through, I come to make sure it exits the way it came in. So, who in your employ has been worshiping one of the dark ones? It would be helpful to interrogate them. Some of these higher powers are significantly more dangerous than others. The fact that it's leaking spiders narrows things down, but it would be nice to know exactly what that is."

"No one works here. It's a safe house. We were just using it to warehouse Spider-man for his post-mortem and then cremation. I assure you, Dr. Banner and Dr. Cho don't worship any dark gods. Cho is an atheist." Tony pointed to Bruce.

"Catholic mostly, but I've done my own new age side trip through India. Never worshipped a dark god, very certain of that," Bruce offered.

Strange frowned, "Well I suppose the practitioner must have been Spider-Man then. That would explain his powers better than the ridiculous story about a spider bite. The dark ones reward their acolytes with power, at least for a while. Of course, they usually get to devour their flesh and soul in return eventually, so it's not a bargain I recommend even if you do want to be strong and sticky. Those were his powers, right?"

"Yeah, Peter Parker wasn't worshipping any dark gods. I'd stake my life on it. If that's a dark god trying to eat his flesh and soul, it's poaching because Peter was not that stupid. Trust me." When Strange didn't look convinced, Tony practically swelled with indignation. "Look, I had this kid monitored 24-7 for months after giving him his first suit. The closest he came to worshiping anything was a viewing of The Empire Strikes Back."

Bruce spoke up. "We ask questions when preparing to perform an autopsy. May and Ben Parker were non-practicing Methodists and when I asked May what she wanted for Peter's remains, she said he was agnostic, that he wouldn't be opposed to whatever we needed to do. I know we don't know everything about anyone, but if this kid was a raging pagan of some kind, no one knew."

Strange paced thoughtfully. "Actually, there are a few higher powers that might take an agnostic outlook as an invitation if given a taste of something they liked. I'm going to try to push the interloper back and close the gate it opened to reach out. If you gentlemen would give me some space."

As little as Tony liked Strange, he begrudgingly respected his role in protecting the Earth. So, he stood down and let the wizard throw magic symbols around at the cooler, and he wasn't completely surprised to see the mound of spiders fade from reality. Tony had half-expected something to have changed in the room with Peter, but he was still pale and dead, a single plastic tube poking out of his mouth. "You closed it? It didn't take his body. Can you be sure it doesn't have his, you know, soul?"

"Oh, it has his soul, I'm fairly certain. It could have consumed his flesh in a fraction of the time we spent discussing the situation if it wanted to. I think it wanted to scare the good doctors away from carving him up. You should keep your eyes open, probably get that body cremated sooner rather than later. Death is rarely a clean ending when dealing with dark gods, or even simple higher powers. From the short time I knew him, Peter doesn't seem like the type of person who would want to be the instrument of harming anyone."

"Wait, cremate him and leave his soul with the dark spider-god thing?" Tony asked. "In what universe is that how we handle this situation?"

"Stark, I'll explain this to you again for clarity. My job is to protect this world, not you and your super-friends. If there's a way to help Peter's soul without compromising the world and I find it, you'll be the first to know. Without knowing precisely what we're dealing with, odds are we're never even going to know what exactly happened to him, much less if there's a way to help. Now this is not the only issue I'm trying to deal with today. Please excuse me." Strange used his sling ring to open a portal back to his sanctum, apparently done discussing the situation.

Tony stared at Bruce, his expression unreadable. "I hate that man and his polite exits."

"That really just happened? Dark gods? Dr. Cho may be rethinking her career choices. She was not a fan of the spiders," Bruce said. "Should I fire up the furnace?"

"No, we're not cremating Peter. Strange can't tell what he's dealing with without more information. If we cremate that body, we're destroying the evidence and any potential for new evidence." Tony shook his head, suddenly so angry he wanted to break something more substantial than a tablet. "I let you throw away the Infinity stones and the kid died. We are not abandoning his immortal soul with anything that can be considered a dark god. Agreed?"

"Tony, we can't just sit on this and wait for something to happen. What if we can't control it when something does?" Bruce asked.

"This isn't a zombie movie. He's in a safely sealed cooler. We aren't going to lose control of the situation."


	2. Flesh and Bone

Author's Note: This is a trippy, reality bending kind of chapter. It's either going to make sense and be fun to read, or I'm going to confuse everyone with it. These are the moments I wish I had beta reader for this fandom. The horror elements get real this chapter.

This story was supposed to be two chapters and done. There will be a third and likely final chapter.

**Chapter 2 – Flesh and Bone**

**THE GARDEN**

The world stretched out, green and lively, before a black and yellow spider. It spun a web spiraling out into a sticky, spoked wheel. Other spiders crowded close, some weavers, others not. It wasn't normal, so many spiders shifting together. No way would there be enough prey to feed them but none of them moved to scatter or defend. The weavers wove and the others lingered because they had been called. Moving methodically around his growing web, the weaving spider caught glimpses of her, their mother, but he never let his eight-eyed gaze linger there. Seeing her in glimpses was almost more than he could bear.

The last spoke in his sticky web complete, the spider retreated to the center to wait. Mother reached out with her spider's leg, slick and black with a sprinkling of delicately patterned hairs. The weaver tried not to look as the leg touched him of all his brothers and sisters, warping and stretching him. His web was destroyed in an instant; the world became a strange and foreign place to his shifting eyes. No longer a beautiful, shiny spider, he scrambled clumsily back. Soft-skinned and awkward, he tried to curl in small, to shrink back to what he had been only moments before.

But mother would not allow him to shrink. Mother had changed him, and she pulled him forward, straight and tall, standing in a way a spider was never meant to. Their mother had changed her face as well, no longer a towering, beautiful spider, she wore the mask of a soft-skinned as well. She stroked his face and whispered incomprehensible words to him.

Careful not to look closely, to see her completely would be too much, he listened until the words had meaning.

"My beautiful child, forgive me."

* * *

Peter was not having a great day. It started okay. The honors society had chosen ecology as their focus for the semester and were scheduled for a field trip to the Intelli-Crops division of Stark Industries. It wasn't a trip to Avenger's Tower and agriculture wasn't exactly the kind of science Peter spent his free time on at all, but it was Stark Industries and that made it the coolest possible agriculture research firm in the world.

Between viewing displays on environmentally friendly fertilizer and water purification techniques, Flash had outdone himself tormenting Peter. Normally it was just a verbal assault, and that was fine, manageable, but today he tripped him into a reclamation pond, the contaminated water, not the clean. Peter almost lost his brand-new glasses in the murky muck. That would have been a disaster on so many levels. May and Ben insisted that he had to have the high index lenses so he wouldn't have giant coke bottle glasses, but those had cost an arm and a leg. Not breaking them was his primary goal in life at the moment. The tour guide freaked out, telling him that he was going to be fine, it wasn't actually dangerous, just smelly, but don't swallow it for God's sake. The faculty sponsor, Ms. Stein, seemed to think he had jumped in for a laugh or something and had zero sympathy for him. She let the tour guide hand him off to a custodian for cleanup and continued with the other students.

The bored janitor gave him a towel and access to a large sink in his closet and Peter made the most of it. Once he was sort of clean, he poked his head into the hall, but the janitor had bailed. "Do I wait around like a kid for help or do I set off on my own tour of learning and exploration?" Peter asked no one. He bit his lip indecisively for a moment before setting out, his soggy tennis shoes squelching with every step. It wasn't like they were touring a highly sensitive area or anything, so Peter peeked through windows into labs, finding mostly simple microscopes and centrifuges, devices he recognized from the labs at school. There was a lab that had aquariums full of snails, a lab with nothing but plexiglass drawers full of white mice, he even saw a lab where two men were dissecting a pile of live lobsters.

Peter considered knocking on that door and asking for directions, but he had read somewhere that lobsters screamed when you put them in boiling water. True or not, he could just imagine that the crustaceans were screaming at their current demise and couldn't make himself linger. He would ask the next people he found.

The hall he had chosen to explore dead-ended at a large set of double doors. Peter tentatively pushed through into a lush green expanse of hydroponics and UV lighting. Tomato vines were growing upside down, heavy red and green fruit dangling in clusters. Squash and cucumbers and even watermelons had been seeded together and trained to grow across a massive trellis structure that spanned a large portion of the room. The smell in the room was fresh and crisp in a way that Peter, long time denizen of Queens, had no reference for. Knowing he didn't belong there and not wanting to damage the experiment, Peter let the door swing shut without actually entering. "Lobster murder room it is," Peter decided, ready to get back to his group. Ned was at home sick and he couldn't necessarily count on anyone else to notice or speak up if he failed to board the bus for home.

The lobster murderers turned out to be okay guys. Bert and Louis, just a couple of grown up nerds themselves, they seemed to understand how he had come to be in front of them covered in pond refuse without a whole lot of explanation. The two men promised to help as soon as they got to a stopping place.

"The lobsters aren't screaming," Peter observed, conversationally.

"Ah kid no, they don't have vocal cords. We are cruelty free anyway, so they wouldn't scream if they could. They're live in the tray. We dunk them in the anesthetic for ten seconds, and they sleep. Then we dissect them. The big water bugs don't feel a thing," Louis explained. He finished his dissection, and clapped Bert on the shoulder. "Keep him entertained, Dr. Bert. I'll walk to reception and find your tour group, young man."

Short, bald and ridiculously friendly, Bert just seemed excited for a captive audience to show off his fancy, farmed lobsters. "We are the only people in the world growing lobster like this. It's pretty cutting edge."

Peter was tempted to ask what was wrong with the old way of growing lobsters but decided he didn't really want to know before the question could fully form. While Bert was fishing up his next tray of subjects, Peter felt a sharp sting on his neck and he instinctively slapped. He pulled a black and yellow spider out of his collar. The biological sciences were not Peter's forte on a good day, and he had no idea what type of spider he was looking at. As a rule, bright colors meant poisonous in nature and that was a bright yellow pattern.

He set the dead arachnid on the lab bench and tried not to panic.

Bert settled his tray of lobsters on the bench and looked Peter's way, apparently ready to regale him with more lobster facts, but he stopped cold. "Oh my God, not another one. Don't move." Rolling up a yellow folder at his side, Bert slapped it down hard on the already dead spider.

"Was that a poisonous spider?" Peter asked, one hand holding the swollen spot on his neck.

"No, that was a very expensive, highly aggressive, genetically mutated, garden spider. Patent pending," Bert snapped. "I can't believe Dr. Martin won a September grant for those monsters and we have to plod along with table scraps for out lovely girls."

"Why would anyone want an aggressive garden spider?" Peter asked.

"Indeed, my point exactly," Bert sighed. "To be fair, the idea is not completely without merit, engineering the spiders to protect the garden from insects so pesticides become unnecessary is brilliant in concept. In execution, those little monsters are never getting past the F.D.A. They protect the plants from insects and then try to attack the humans when they come to harvest. No, they're not poisonous but the little jerks hurt." Bert showed Peter a series of bites in various stages of healing on his arms. "And poor Louis is allergic. She can't even contain them in her lab. They keep escaping. I've complained to Dr. Horris and I'll keep complaining until they shut her down or she gets her project under control."

"Wow," Peter said, far less worried after seeing the bites on Bert. "Talk about a bad lab neighbor."

The lights flickered and dimmed, but Bert didn't seem to notice. Peter felt a tickle on his arm. Another spider crept up, shiny black eyes staring at him. Peter brushed it off dancing back, but there were more, crawling in his hair and clothes, tiny spiders scurrying out of his nostrils and ears. So many spiders and he couldn't get away. "Help me," Peter screamed. He dropped to the ground rolling, hoping to crush the spiders in his clothes and crawling on him. Why wasn't anyone helping him? Then the spiders were biting him, a hundred tiny arachnid mouths digging into his flesh and filling him with poison.

Peter screamed, beating at himself until as suddenly as it began, the scrabbling spiders and their sharp bites were gone. Gasping for breath, Peter struggled to his feet, the lab no longer bright and friendly. Bert was gone. A half-dissected, drugged and dying lobster stared at him with its stalked black eyes. "That never happened," Peter told the room. "Louis came back and took me to the bus. I went home. It was just one bite." His skin rejected this assertion, swelling tight everywhere, over his face and hands, his legs and arms. He scratched at the bites, desperate to relieve the bone deep itch.

It took both hands to grip the doorknob with his swollen fingers, but Peter managed to escape the lobster lab. "Louis came back and took me to the bus," Peter repeated, trying to exit how he remembered, to escape this nightmare, but the halls were changed, and every turn lead only to the double doors and the hydroponics lab. Peter used the corner of the wall to help him scratch his back, anything to relieve the maddening itch. "My kingdom for some Benadryl," he moaned.

With nowhere else to go, Peter pushed through the double doors and into a jungle. There were too many shadows and holes, too many hiding places for spiders. So, Peter ran. If he got through the lab he could get out and away from this false memory, this twisted bad dream. It felt like he had run forever, shining eight-eyed creatures lurking all around him, waiting for him to tire, to slow so they could attack again. When another set of double doors appeared, Peter pushed through, but not to freedom.

It was the lobster lab again. Instead of Bert, a teenage girl stood in a very professional lab coat. Her severely cut black hair framed a sharp pale face. Her shiny black eyes, Peter couldn't look at those for long, his instincts screaming danger. He looked to the side instead. She might be wearing a human face, but whatever was inside her, he didn't want to see. Even now facing a monster, he couldn't stop scratching. God but it itched so much.

Apparently oblivious to his distress, the woman spoke in a cool calm monotone. "Hello Peter. I know you don't remember me, but we met here. My children, those weak little spiders, were being tampered with, the core code of their beings shifting. It displeased me. With no true vessel in this world or even this vicinity of the galaxy, I couldn't quite diagnose the nature of the interference in their lives. The children tasted higher organisms at my encouragement but found no viable vessels for me to interact with to loan me eyes to see and ears to hear." She picked up the dead garden spider and it returned to life in her hands. "No viable vessels until you."

She sighed, and suddenly without moving visibly she was behind Peter, kissing the original bite on his neck with her fake human lips. "I entered here, through the bite. It didn't take long for me to see the truth through your eyes. The human's tampering was small and clumsy and not concerning overall. I was satisfied. You helped me. It was rude of me to enter your consciousness and body without invitation. It was taking without paying a price, and I am always fair. You were already clever as a spider, so in payment for your help, I gifted you a bit of strength." She rubbed her fingers together and kissed his neck again. "A bit of spider magic. And I left you be."

Using the glass panel in the lab cabinets to try and see what the monster girl was doing behind him without turning, Peter only saw his own reflection; every visible inch of skin was misshapen and swollen, draining blood and pus from bites on top of bites. His clothes bulged grotesquely from the swollen tumors of purulent abscessed wounds. "Let me wake up then," Peer gasped, "If we're even, please stop this."

"If we were even, this would not be happening, and this is most certainly not a bad dream." She walked back in front of him and smiled, her lips stretching far wider than they should, revealing a double row of extremely sharp teeth. "Let me help you, Peter. You're uncomfortable."

Peter tried to run but he couldn't move, trapped in a spiderweb, his struggles just securing him tighter. "Oh God, no," he begged. She climbed on him and he squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn't have to see, certain if he saw the thing behind the girl-mask he would go mad from it. Her oh so sharp teeth sunk deeply into the fevered tissue of his face, and like peeling an overripe banana she ripped his flesh away.

It took some time for Peter to realize that with every bite, she was ripping away his pain, the discomfort and itch. Each bite was alien and horrifying but Peter sighed in relief, leaning into the strangely gentle monster ripping him to pieces.

Once she had pulled all the diseased flesh away, she carefully disentangled him from her web and cradled him to her chest. Like a bitch might clean a newborn puppy she cleansed whatever remained of him, licking and nibbling him from head to toe. Peter didn't fight, just kept his eyes shut and waited for it to end.

Finally, she set him on his feet and stepped away. "Open your eyes child. My mask is in place."

Peter knew without looking that he was whole. His senses had returned, his strength and the bit of height he had gained in the two years since her bite. She had returned him to himself as he was when he died fighting Thanos. Peter looked at his hands and ran them over his face and body relieved to be himself and healthy. "I don't understand what's happening. You said we aren't even? Who owes who? How do we get back to even and leaving each other alone?"

Pain shot through his abdomen, hunger so sharp it bent him double. His stomached growled and Peter choked.

"It's hungry business being born. I'll wait while you eat." The girl sat primly on Bert's lab stool and gestured vaguely toward the pile of flesh she had peeled from his bones.

"I can't eat that," Peter hissed. "That's… I won't. I'd rather starve." Another cramp tore through his abdomen and he groaned.

"Starving is an option. But it would be wasteful and disrespectful when I went through so much trouble to prepare the meal in advance, knowing your new flesh would need it," she sighed. "You don't have long to decide. Eat your meal or return to the dust that awaits all mortals."

"This is not happening," Peter hissed from his knees. The strength was flowing out of him like water. His vision blurred and the world faded to muffled near-silence. In desperation, Peter groped forward and grabbed a handful of shredded skin. God help him, was he really doing this? He took a bite.

Forget pizza and Thai food and cheeseburgers from Moe's, nothing he had ever eaten tasted better than the morsel in his mouth. Peter lost himself to the hollow hunger inside, eating his way mindlessly through the mound of festering flesh, blind to the reality of what it was. He only came back to himself when the flesh was gone and his hunger appeased.

Filthy past his elbows and with blood smeared over his face, Peter belched then retched unproductively as his mind commanded his body to reject what it had consumed.

The girl clapped her hands. "It is rewarding to watch a child eat. All my children say that I'm an excellent cook."

She changed her clothes with a shrug, discarding the lab coat and slacks for a very comfortable looking pair of jeans and t-shirt. The room shifted as well to a replica of the small apartment in Queens that had been his home. "Let's get you cleaned up, Peter."

The world folded and changed at her whim. It's her web, Peter thought, not with awe or wonder, but with building dread. She escorted him to the kitchen table where she wiped away the last vestiges of his meal, the motherly gesture unwelcome, but Peter gritted his teeth and bore it, not even flinching as she wiped his face with a hand towel.

He had been eating it only moments ago, but he barely remembered what that meal was and not at all how it tasted. He'd liked it, but he was glad to forget. Instinctively he knew that flavor was dangerous to his sanity, like the eyes of the thing sitting across from him. "You said that we're not even. I want to fix that. You said you like to be fair. Do I owe you? Tell me what I owe you and I'll pay it back if I can. I'd like to get back to being even and leaving each other alone."

"I'm hurt. You aren't enjoying my hospitality?" The monster giggled, an impersonation of a human sound that wasn't close to comforting. "We didn't really stay even for very long, child. You didn't make it a year before begging me for help, for more power. It wasn't a hard decision to extend you credit. It's always good to have a few primed vessels across the realms that owe you."

"I never begged you for power," Peter argued.

_Sound filled the room, sound from his past, grunting and scrabbling, the settling concrete tinkled in the background. "Hello? Hello?" his voice called out, nakedly afraid. "Please, I'm down here. I'm stuck. I can't move."_

"I wouldn't have helped just because you desperately begged anyone listening to come get you," the monster said. "I mean, if you hadn't invoked me and tried to channel the power I gifted you so beautifully moments later, I'd have let you die there, slowly compressed until you suffocated. But you're a vessel, the only one I had any connection to on your world. I didn't let you die. You were an investment."

Peter remembered everything about being buried under a concrete building by the Vulture. Crazily enough, he thought the power to lift himself free had been already inside him. He had thought it was an adrenaline fueled, mind over matter thing. "Okay, maybe, I owe you. What do you want for that?" Peter asked. "Can I give the power back? I didn't understand what was happening, where it was coming from."

"Oh child, if it was just that, things would be simple, but that debt between us strengthened our bond, so when you wielded six infinity stones, channeled that power and bent it to your will, you took me for the ride." Her mask was slipping, the shadow of eight arms visible around her.

Peter stared down at the table, his heart hammering hard. Had he burned her with the stones? "I didn't know. Whatever pain or damage it caused you, please forgive me. Have mercy."

"Child stop crying. We will be even again, very soon." The monster reached for him, spindly spider arms drawing him close. "When I've finished you, perfected you, I will balance the scales between us. I promise to be fair."

* * *

**THE WORLD**

May did not plan to have an affair with Happy Hogan. Between Ben's death and her own dusting, barely enough time had passed for her to be ready to think about serious dating. She had no time to process her return and what it meant before she had to deal with Peter's rapid decline. She had latched on to Happy in the emotional aftermath. Strong and solid, Happy let her take the lead. He never asked for more than she could give him. Their affair was simple, an affirmation of life amidst so much grief and death.

It didn't hurt that he so clearly loved Peter too, that she could talk about her kid, reminisce and rant and grieve. He understood.

It had been two weeks hiding in Happy's apartment, living on take out and Keurig coffee when May started to get her wind back. Sitting outside on the balcony, wrapped in one of Happy's thick, oversized robes, she watched people stroll by and wondered which had returned and which had lived through the blip. They were integrated back together, living their lives.

"I have donuts," Happy announced from the kitchen. He made his way out and dropped the box on the table beside her. "Good morning."

May chose a warm glazed and sighed as the fluffy-as-air pastry melted in her mouth. "Wow, that's almost worth the increased pants size all this take out is going to leave me with."

"You can afford a pound or two," Happy said as he quietly obliterated three of the donuts.

"I've got to get a job and find an apartment. I can't keep hiding up here. When Ben died, I didn't shut down like this. Of course, there was rent and work, and a teenager who had been traumatized. With Peter's death, I've not had a good reason to hold it together." May paused and smiled warmly at Happy. "And I've had a really kind friend willing to let me be useless and a little crazy. I'm going to stop crashing your life very soon. Give me a few days to find a job and a few weeks to find an apartment. If you want your privacy back sooner, there's a community shelter program specifically for people displaced by the blip, and I qualify."

"May, pardon my bluntness but Hell no. You can stay here as long as you need. I don't remember asking you to go anywhere." Happy frowned. "I know you're not in the kind of emotional place for this thing between us to have been, real. I get that. Hell, I told myself that from the very beginning, but when you're better and it isn't weird anymore. I want a coffee date, a real one. What do you say?"

For a moment May was angry with Happy for being attached, for wanting something more from her than she was ready for, but her mind caught up with the irrational emotional impulse and she nodded. "I don't know when that will be, Happy, but okay." May laughed, her eyes filling with tears. "Can you see Peter's face if he found us being friends with benefits? He would die of embarrassment."

Happy nodded. "He never cared for any of the guys you brought around. He didn't come out and say it over text, but I could read between the lines. I doubt he would have approved of me either. He was very protective of you."

"How much did he tell you over text?" May asked. "He mentioned my dates?"

"Oh May, it would be easier to tell you what he didn't mention. He mentioned his snacks, his quizzes, the weather," Happy listed. "I was practically the kid's diary for a while there, and just about as responsive as one. It took some time for Peter's brand of talkative to grow on me."

"Do you still have them, the texts?" May asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Do you want to read them?"

Happy and May sat together on his balcony all morning, reading Peter's old text messages, laughing and crying. When the last message was read, May seemed more peaceful than she'd been since Peter's memorial. "Can you get word to Stark that I'd like Peter's ashes? I want to scatter them at the cemetery where his parents and Ben are interred. Not leaving his genetic material around for mad scientists, I understand, but I want those ashes."

"No problem. Let me make a call."

* * *

If you asked Stephen Strange, being a sorcerer and a neurosurgeon weren't very different career paths. Both required intelligence and creativity but started with massive amounts of reading and rote memorization. Becoming the best surgeon in his field had required dedication. He literally clocked a thousand hours in anatomy lab, drilling himself, carving through cadavers. No amount of book-learning or anatomy lab practice could ever compare to the moment he sawed open a skull, trimmed the living pulsing dura and viewed his first patient's brain. Stephen was one student among many before the playing field became real live tissue, because some things cannot be taught, and the art of carving living flesh successfully was something he had been born with.

Like navigating a living brain had always come naturally, Stephen saw the mystic arts as a living system, a series of pathways and protocols that could be manipulated and reimagined within certain limitations. His early success with those manipulations saw him safely through the death of his mentor and the defeat of Dormammu. They saw him rise as the new Sorcerer Supreme, despite him being one of the least well read or experienced of the remaining practitioners.

Stephen settled his reign in New York's sanctum, partly because it was home, but also because the other sanctums were largely destroyed. Then the blip had done them no favors, with no one rising to fill the leadership void. Instead the few remaining sorcerers each struggled along in their own zones, trying to keep things together, but without the cohesiveness that a Sorcerer Supreme would have given their efforts.

With Strange's return, many small problems that had been left to fester for five years escalated quickly, overwhelming him. He had been chasing demons and dark witches and a hoard of vampires, day and night before noticing the spider-god problem. He had just barely finished binding the coven (after they had already sacrificed a dozen innocents) and the vampire problem had very nearly wiped out an entire town in rural Idaho. So, he stormed into Stark's safe house and accused them all of worshiping dark gods. When no one owned up to it, he accused the dead kid that saved them from Thanos. In desperation to get back to people he could maybe actually save, he slapped a Band-Aid on the problem and abandoned Peter to his fate.

As much as he hated to admit it, Dr. Strange did not yet know close to everything the average Sorcerer Supreme knew before ever taking on the role. He learned fast and had good instincts, but that only took you so far. As a surgeon he had been given time to clock a thousand lab hours so that he was not completely fooled by his first torturously twisting glioma that didn't perfectly follow tissue planes on dissection. When faced with his first deceptively simple-on-the-surface supernatural case with Spider-Man's death, Stephen did not see the twisting, turning truth beyond the superficial, not right away.

No, Stephen disappeared into other more pressing problems, oblivious as a first-year surgeon who had left a sponge behind, to the true problem he had left untended in Tony Stark's safe house.

Looking back now that things were more under control, Stephen could admit that it hadn't been his most shining, empathetic moment, telling Stark that the kid would have to spend his afterlife being digested by a spider deity, then scolding the man for questioning the situation. He could have stopped and been clearer, explained that the types of higher powers that claimed souls and spewed spiders were as a group, efficiently voracious eaters. He could have walked him through the reality that these beings just ate too fast. The kid wouldn't suffer long, but he was gone. Strange had been pressed for time and he was sleep deprived, so Stark didn't get his best explanation.

Sleep was the only thing Stephen wanted now that all imminent apocalypses had been averted, but he checked the early warning enchantment he had draped around the word one last time. Dozens of small supernatural anomalies dotted the globe, none of them especially concerning, except maybe for one. The otherworldly gate centered on Peter's corpse had been forcibly closed, but it hadn't severed the connection between the body and its absent soul. Even without Stark cremating the body, when the deity finished its meal, the connection should have fallen apart.

That connection smoldered on in quiet defiance of Stephen's original diagnosis and treatment of the problem.

With one wistful glance at his bed, Stephen strode down to the library. "Wong? Can you think of a higher power with a spider affinity that would linger over a soul-meal for over two weeks?"

"No," Wong answered. Without being asked he started stacking ancient tomes with the information that might answer his questions. Once Stephen's table was overfull, Wong headed for the exit. "You might find it easier to think if you slept a few hours."

"I'll sleep when I've got the answer." Selecting an ancient scroll, Stephen settled in to read, determined to solve the spider-god riddle.

The next morning Wong found him snoring with an ancient tome open on his chest. He slammed one of the books on the table closed, startling Dr. Strange awake. "Good morning. Any luck naming the higher power that took Spider-Man?"

Stephen groaned. "No, I don't' have enough information to narrow it down. I may be completely on the wrong track. All the usual suspects would be finished eating by now."

"Go get more information then." Wong started replacing the books.

"I ordered Stark to cremate Peter's body. That was the best evidence we had," Strange admitted.

"That wasn't your smartest moment," Wong said.

"I'd been awake for five days and hadn't yet dealt with the vampires in Idaho. It wasn't my best moment on a lot of levels." Stephen sighed, massaging his temples. "Maybe we could use the ashes to perform a seven-point snare and pull his soul free?"

"Dangerous to cast a snare blind. You could get yourself in trouble," Wong said, looking speculative. "What do you think the odds are that Stark cremated the body like you told him?"

"I've considered that, and the body might very well be intact. Unfortunately, Stark is as likely to start firing repulsors at me, as let me examine the body or the ashes if that's all we've got." Stephen shrugged. "My bedside manner was never my strong suit."

"We'll work on that. I'll call ahead, see if we can't get invited back to help. Give me a second, Bruce left me a phone."

* * *

Wanda Maximoff knew a few things about pain. She and Pietro had volunteered for experiments as children that might give them power. A toxic mixture of naïve and bitter, they had no idea what it would entail. Wanda watched the other volunteers burn away under the energy meant to change them and she gritted her teeth, determined to be stronger, to last longer. She drew strength from her brother at her side. Leaning on one another they survived.

The experiments who made it past the first round, who lived long enough to change, died in other ways. Mostly they killed themselves, overwhelmed by the physical agony of their new bodies or minds. Her brother started to slip away from her, to surrender to the pain and she had used her own power instinctively to save him. She entered his mind and she became his gatekeeper, blocking the changes to his body when it was too much for him to process. She let him adjust slowly to the speed he had been gifted.

There wasn't anyone to guard Wanda's mind, to ease her into the chaos of the power bleeding through her, but she rode it and struggled through, strong enough for herself and Pietro too.

Standing on the other side of Thanos, years removed from those days of transformation, Wanda wished she could feel her brother one more time.

The Avengers had scattered, and Wanda had no Pietro to protect, no Vis to love, no team to support. She had sheltered momentarily, helping Peter and his aunt, a project to distract her from the truth. She was alone now with only the river of fire circulating in her veins to remind her of who she was.

Well, she was mostly alone. Peter told her his secret, that he spied on the doctors in the halls, but she never told him even one of hers. No one in the world knew the real breadth of her mind magics or the side effects. No one knew that entering a mind and making a manipulation, even a temporary one, linked that person to her permanently, a thread of connection that she could use to check in or meddle if she were less ethical about the complication. Her collection of threads was not very large, Tony and Steve, Thor and Bruce.

Determined to not be a monster, she avoided the threads usually. Today she was wallowing in her grief and she found herself inventorying them, wishing she could reform Vis or Pietro's, to feel their minds and spirits with her one last time. The thread she forged for Peter hadn't much crossed her mind since his death, not until she skimmed her collection and found him wedged next to Stark, glowing softly with life.

She picked the delicate thread up, holding it gently as though it might fall apart if she exhaled too hard. Wanda willed her consciousness along the thread. "Peter?"

* * *

Sitting behind a desk in a generic Stark Industries office, Tony rested his head on his hand and listened to the latest potential wizard for hire. The man had strolled in and immediately started critiquing the room's flow and Tony's chakras. "Look, I'm going to stop you there. I'm looking for the real deal. Can you make the sparkly portals, retrieve a soul that's been stolen by a scary dark spider god thing? I don't need healing crystals or my future told. I need a real sorcerer."

"I assure you, I'm for real. There are no sparkling portals. Mr. Stark, you may have been scammed by a charlatan," the new age guru said seriously.

"God help me. This should not be so hard," Tony moaned. He pushed an envelope across the table. "For your trouble coming out. Go heal someone else's aura."

The fake wizard had barely made it out the door before F.R.I.D.A.Y. was talking. "Boss, you have a call from Dr. Banner."

Tony gestured to accept the call and dropped dramatically back into his seat. "Bruce, if the spiders are back, I don't want to talk about it. They went away by themselves every time before. We're not cremating the kid until I know his soul is chilling on a cloud with harps and shit. We're not discussing this again."

"No, we're spider-free at the moment, but we've got other guests. Wanda arrived a few hours ago, pretty upset. She insisted on seeing the body, making absolutely sure Peter was really dead. She accused me of experimenting on him, rather vigorously. We would probably still be having that discussion if she hadn't elbowed her way into my mind and proved herself wrong."

"Okay, unexpected, but not all together terrible. You said guests. Who else dropped by?" Tony asked.

"We have two sorcerers here offering to help, Strange and his friend Wong. They both seem sincere, and remarkably not angry about our failure to cremate the evidence. That's great news, right? How quick can you get back here?"

"An hour," Tony said. "Don't start without me."

A fourth voicemail had arrived from Happy that afternoon. May wanted Peter's ashes, and Tony was dodging the conversation. Maybe she had a right to know what was happening with her nephew's body and afterlife, but she was a non-practicing Methodist that didn't need the image of her nephew being eaten by a spider-god. Hell, Tony didn't need that image in his head, so he avoided the voicemail and continued to work on the problem.

If things drug out too long, he'd just send her fake ashes. He could live with that deception. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. send Happy a text. So sorry about the delay sending along Peter's ashes. Confirming that no viable DNA remains has taken longer than planned."

* * *

**THE GARDEN**

Late afternoon sun illuminated his Queens bedroom, painting everything in warm golds. Hunkered over his latest project, Peter used his repurposed soldering iron to repair the motherboard from a discarded computer.

"Peter, dinner's ready," May called.

Of course, dinner was ready, Peter groaned and continued soldering the most delicate part of the motherboard. "Five minutes," he called. "I'm almost done."

May appeared in the door, a yellow kitchen towel thrown over her shoulder. "What are you building there? Is it for robotics club?"

"What? No, I'm just tinkering, experimenting," Peter explained, soldering madly. "I'm finished." He set the hot tipped tool into its cradle and scampered to the bathroom to wash up rather than answer May's question properly. He needed to get it a little smaller, but he had an idea for some goggles to help him focus when he was swinging. "What's for dinner?"

"I tried a new recipe, zesty spaghetti with vegan artichoke balls."

Peter frowned at that description, certain that this was going to be interesting, but probably not very tasty. "We're eating vegan now?"

"Oh no." May set a basket of garlic bread on the table and a tub of margarine. "It just sounded interesting in the magazine, interesting and healthy."

How many times had interesting recipes ruined dinner in the Parker household? He was starving so Peter resolved to just eat the spaghetti as fast as possible so he could get back to his goggles. May dished up a serving for herself and Peter when her phone rang. "I need to take this." She slipped back to her bedroom, a futile attempt at privacy. Spider-hearing was a bitch on secret keeping. If she didn't want him to know she had a coffee date, that was fine. Peter wasn't upset. Ben had been gone nearly a year. She was allowed to not be lonely.

Peter grabbed a large hunk of garlic bread and took a tentative bite of the gray pasta with spiky excuses for fake meatballs. For spaghetti it was remarkably crunchy. Fortunately for May and their grocery budget, he was hungry enough to choke down the super-aldante spaghetti. Peter basically swallowed the food whole, chewing on garlic bread between bites to keep the flavor from getting too overwhelming. "May, I'm finished. I'm going back to my room to keep working."

May covered the bottom of her phone. "Leave my serving, Peter, and put the rest away. Wash the rest of the dishes, please sir."

Peter groaned but didn't argue. "Okay, I'm on it." Stacking the leftovers and dishes a bit precariously, he managed to get everything to the counter in one trip. He rubbed his stomach and let a foul tasting belch out as he ran water into the sink. "I'm going to regret that meal," Peter muttered. Technically they did not throw away leftovers. May had an entire collection of Tupperware containers in vibrant colors. If there was any doubt of her plans for the vegan pasta, she had even served the spaghetti in a pink plastic bowl that he would just need to find a top for before sliding it into the fridge.

Feeling only a little guilty, Peter went to rake it down the disposal instead. He ate it once. His stomach was angry about that decision. May wouldn't know that he hadn't just finished the lot. Mid-motion with the bowl in hand, Peter dropped it. The spiky artichoke meatballs were moving, alien eggs that had cracked open, birthing spiders. They crawled amongst the noodles, alive.

Peter's stomach cramped and he belched again, certain that he could feel them crawling inside him. "May?" He strode back to the table where spaghetti covered spiders, hundreds of them, spilled over the edge of her still-full bowl. "May, I'm sick."

She didn't answer. She just wasn't there. His stomach was literally swelling, the spiders apparently multiplying inside him. Panicked, he hurried the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet before there would have been an embarrassing mess to clean up. His guts were cramping and gurgling under the press of the eight-legged abominations swelling inside them. Where had May gone? Couldn't she hear him? "May, I'm so sick," Peter managed to croak. "Please."

Long, painfully resonant belches ripped out of him with every other breath. His T-shirt rolled up, no longer able to cover his rapidly distending stomach.

"I can't do this again," Peter choked out.

The spell was broken, his memories cleared. Peter knew this was another nightmare, another punishment he had to survive because of the debt he owed. The unending cycle expressed itself slightly differently every time, but the theme was predictable as clockwork; corruption to decay followed by rebirth fueled by consumption. Peter had already ridden this ride dozens of times now. Every time it seemed like he couldn't survive another round, not without losing his mind.

Peter screamed as the spiders burrowed out from his bulbous stomach, crawling under his skin. He screamed until his voice disappeared, transitioned to a vibrating unending belch than only stopped when his swollen mouth sealed shut, trapping the pungent gas under his skin. The spiders nested in his cheeks and scalp, swelling great tumorous nodules onto his arms and legs until they strained against his joints, dislocating under their own weight. The toilet beneath him shattered under his massive growth, porcelain stabbing him, another pain lost in the din of agonies on agonies.

The Parker's small bathroom had only one mirror, but the room shifted, the walls changing into massive reflective surfaces. It wasn't enough to torture him, to warp and damage him, no she wanted him to see himself, to appreciate his complete transformation.

No resemblance to humanity remained beyond his eyes, lidless brown orbs, that were not able to look away from his new reality, a wriggling mountain of festering, spider infested flesh.

Peter knew it was just another stage in the cycle, another round of torture that would end eventually in rebirth, but he cried anyway. What if it wasn't? What if this time she found his transformation too complete, the perfection she sought? Time stretched out and he tried to beg, to move and run, but this transformation was immobile and inarticulate, a living incubator of monsters. His body swelled lopsidedly with pockets of spiders and gas that ruptured at times and drained. The expelled spiders would skitter over him, small waves of almost relief as the pressure inside dropped, only to swell again and again.

Time became a meaningless thing. Peter convinced himself that this was her perfect torture. If this pain, this flesh was his ultimate future, he wished the spiders would just burrow into his brain and stop him seeing anymore, feeling anymore.

"Hello Peter," his torturer said. For the first time, rather than wear an anonymous face, she had chosen to emulate May. "How are you feeling?"

How dare she? Peter tried to scream and curse, but his mangled mouth emitted little more than hissing gurgles, a smattering of spiders skittering out with his angry gasps.

"I don't think the spaghetti agreed with you. You've spent the whole week in the bathroom." She sat on the edge of the tub and grabbed a handful of his body in the vicinity of the vestiges of his right hand. "I know it hurts, child, but you need this. Perfection is not easy. It is a journey." She stroked him, the spiders inside straining to feel her touch. "Don't break now. You can bear it a little longer."

He hated her so much, but her hands relieved his pain. Her whispered words calmed him. I won't break Peter thought, relaxing into her ministrations. I won't break.

He felt the familiar bite of her sharp teeth, tearing away the rancid reality of his desecrated flesh. She wasn't going to let him suffer any longer. If his mouth could yet form the words, he would have thanked her. In these moments when she ended the pain, he almost forgot to hate her.

Standing whole and human again, Peter made no effort to stem the tears streaking his face. This was just another step in the cycle. When she ordered him to eat, he consumed the remnants of his last transformation greedily, spiders and skin, muscles and viscera. He'd stubbornly not eaten only once in their time together. He was so naïve then, so ready to find an escape, to win. He was an Avenger and he'd died to win a battle before.

The monster had just smiled her too wide smile and watched his new flesh rot. She let him scream his victory, and then like a mother bird feeding its flightless child, she had vomited the meal into him anyway. Peter didn't like to remember the time that followed, returned to a perfectly pleasant memory from his life, but he wasn't human. The monstrously rotted version of him stumbled into what should have been a moment of relief and Ned ran from him screaming. Starring in his very own creature feature, Peter couldn't speak to beg mercy and the humans showed him none, capturing him and experimenting on him. A vision of Mr. Stark himself had spent days callously carving him to pieces, a helpless, worthless specimen.

No Peter ate desperately, almost joyfully, and when the last morsel was gone, he licked the ground. His last transformation was massive and consuming it should have been impossible in his compact, human form, but it soaked into him, not deforming his lean frame. Peter squatted and waited, hands on his feet. He stared at his torturer. He had been mad at her for wearing May's face and form at first, but he just wanted her to touch him now. He needed her cool, inhuman hands on his face and the respite that would come with forgetfulness.

"You have come so far, so quickly," the monster cooed. "You will be so beautiful when we're done."

Once Peter was gone, dispersed to his restful moments the monster adjusted her masks and observed an interloper to her garden. Very much human, if only here in spirit, she recognized the man from Peter's memories. "You have entered where you do not belong, wizard."

"Greetings, Wanderer, Weaver of Webs, I've come to propose a bargain," Dr. Strange said.

"The wizard and his bargains. I do believe you tried that line on a God before. Dormammu's embarrassment." She smiled and shrugged away her masks. A spider creature too large and unnatural for the human mind to ever hope to process peered down at him, only one of eight shining, black eyes focused on him while the other seven observed elsewhere.

If he had come here unprepared, Stephen might have been caught by the spider's unmasking and his mind might have crumbled under the overload of her true face. The wards around his eyes, spiritual sunglasses of sorts, protected him against such shenanigans, even when he was an astral projection. He saw the spider, without the rippling extra-dimensional baggage. "You obviously know what effect your unique visage would have on a mortal, human mind. It's not very polite to try and drive a guest insane."

"You're not a guest, wizard. It's not very polite to stroll into a spider's garden uninvited and demand a bargain. You will leave or I will eat your soul for the transgression."

"I'm here to help Peter, to rescue him from your tender mercies. I watched quietly, this cycle you're pushing him through. I didn't get it the first time, but the second time it made more sense." Strange crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Bargain with me, Wanderer. Don't make me dismantle your web. You've manipulated a child into believing he's in debt to you. You owe Peter a great deal and this quest to perfect him, will not balance the scale between the two of you, whatever you've convinced yourself."

"You know nothing of my accounts or my debts," the spider spat. She raised one of her legs and slammed it down, expelling the wizard from her garden.


	3. Bitter Pill

**NOTE:** This chapter steps back in time just a smidge at the start. Also, this part took longer than planned and has way too much exposition. But it is what it is. One more chapter and we're definitely done. (I know I said that last chapter...)

Also, I quoted a few lines from a song at the beginning of this chapter. I credited the artist that sings it, but I know she covered the song. The original artist is unknown to me, so I just credited the artist whose version lives on my iPod. She sings it in a haunting beautiful way.

**Chapter 3 – Bitter Pill**

_It's a terrible love  
__And I'm walking with spiders  
__It's a terrible love that I'm walking in  
__It's a terrible love  
__And I'm walking with spiders  
__It's a terrible love that I'm walking in  
__It's quiet company_

_-Terrible Love by Birdy_

**THE WORLD**

The main viewing room of Tony's safe house was dominated by a hovering, cross-legged wizard, deep in some sort of meditative trance. Glowing alchemic runes circled in the air like tiny supernatural mosquitoes.

"What part of, wait for me, was hard to understand?" Stark asked Bruce, his voice remarkably even. "What the Hell is he doing? Do you even know, or did you just abdicate the situation to him without a question? I distinctly remember this gem of a human being telling us to let the spider-god eat the kid's soul before flouncing off in his fancy red cape."

"Tony, look, the spiders came back and Strange seemed adamant that Peter didn't have a lot of time." Bruce shrugged. "He wanted to go see what he could find while the door was open. It seemed like the right call."

"Let's hope it is, since the call's been made. I really don't trust his judgement." Tony glared at the serenely floating Strange.

"It was my judgement too," Wong said. He stepped forward and bowed his head slightly to Tony. "The types of higher powers that leave signatures like this and hold an association with spiders are a small group. They don't play with their food and mortals like Peter, like any of us, aren't anything to them beyond a small meal. After exhausting the research available to us, Dr. Strange couldn't determine why Peter was giving this particular spider-god such a hard time with its meal. We might be dealing with a new power that we have no record of, or a power behaving strangely."

Tony didn't bother trying to hold back his angry, incredulous expression. "Kid's a goner, spider food, until its an interesting case and then we have all the help in the world."

Wong spared a stern glance at his absent colleague. "Stephen didn't express himself well when he left last time. There was no reason to believe staying and trying would save your friend. His soul should have been all but gone by the time we became aware of the situation and there were other lives he was trying to save at the same time. He was triaging on the battlefield and missed this one a bit." Wong shrugged. "I would have made the same call. Strange is astral projecting at an unidentified deity, at great personal risk, to try and help now."

"He's a real hero." The sarcasm tasted particularly bitter, and Tony just wanted to hit something, to put on a nice red and gold suit, and pound a villain he could touch. It wasn't Bruce who made the mistake of abdicating Peter's problems, not at first. Tony had let the doctors deal with things because he was too damn squeamish to look the kid in his eyes. He might have helped if he got off his ass while it was still a medical crisis. The supernatural crisis was so far out of his realm of expertise that he had literally no starting place.

Truth was, he needed the smug asshole who had finally deigned to help. Without Strange and his resources, there weren't going to be any harps or clouds for the kid. "How long has Strange been out there? When do we expect him back?"

"The door is closed," Wong said. "When the spiders return again, I suspect so will Dr. Strange. We'll know more then."

Tony nodded, "F.R.I.D.A.Y. give me a statistical analysis on the frequency of the spider sightings in the cooler and probability of next occurrence."

"On it, boss." Regression curves began filling a wall screen adjacent to the viewing window into the cooler. Peter's lifeless body still lay there on display, sad plastic tube still taped into his mouth.

"So, where's the witchy one? Didn't you say Wanda was here?" Tony asked.

Bruce looked confused for a moment and then shrugged. "She left a bit after the sorcerers showed up, I guess?"

* * *

**THE GARDEN**

Cautious, contemplative action had never been Wanda's approach to life. She didn't stop and ask herself why she was chasing Peter so hard. She didn't wonder how dangerous it would be to follow the blue thread in her brain back to its origin. She just went. That journey seemed to dead end in Stark's safe house until the sorcerers showed up and pushed things forward.

While Stephen Strange hashed out a plan with his friend Wong, Wanda emulated him in her own, less conventional way. Their very controlled and contained spells and wards felt like a domesticated cousin of the chaos magic she could bend to her will and emotions. She warped reality just a bit to remain unnoticed and she followed Strange on his journey.

It wasn't her first trip out of body, but it was her longest. They moved rapidly through a dim, web-lined tunnel filled with spiders; their shining eyes watching. Wanda stayed as close to the center as she could, a hand touching Strange's red cloak. There was no slow down at the end, both of them stumbling forward into a lush green garden. Before she could properly orient herself, Strange was on her, grim and angry.

"Not sure how you just did that, Maximoff, right? This isn't a game. Who trained you in the mystic arts? Are you a witch, a sorcerer, or something else?" Strange circled slowly around her, not looking one direction for more than a moment, scanning their environment constantly. "Are you a witch?"

"I'm something else, and I'm here to help Peter. We're sort of friends." Wanda gripped the blue thread tighter, feeling Peter's horror and dread roll through again, stronger than the last time. He wanted to die to escape wherever he was, and it was so like Pietro in Struker's lab that Wanda couldn't help visibly tensing.

"Do you sense something? There are spiders and webs everywhere, but they seem blind to our spiritual projections."

Wanda held up the thread of delicately glowing blue thread. "Peter is not in a good place. We need to find him."

"You are something else, you said. How were you trained in the mystic arts? What are you and what is that?" Stephen asked, careful to keep his distance from the unknown object.

Wanda laughed and elbowed past Strange, following her thread. "I'm self taught and this is a connection to Peter. I intend to follow it to him, a little like I followed you here."

Stephen recoiled a bit, like he would have from a self-taught surgeon. Some things should not be dabbled in. "Just wait, we need information before facing whatever is trying to eat him. When you know the higher power, you know their rules of operation. It's the only advantage a mortal can bring into play with these beings." Strange couldn't physically restrain her as they were both non corporeal, but he moved ahead of her and she stopped for him. "It helps no one to find him and get eaten too."

Wanda waved the thread at him angrily. "It isn't eating him." She wasn't sure she could explain the unique horror of feeling your humanity slipping away from you a bit at a time, but she recognized it in Peter so like herself and her brother and the ill-fated subjects they shared a laboratory with. "It's changing him. He needs help now."

Strange went still and he half-smiled, like maybe something finally made sense to him. "Okay, even if it isn't eating him, we still need to know enough to help him. Let me scout this world just long enough to be more certain of what we're dealing with, or until you think we just can't wait any longer. While we scout, I'll explain what I think we've projected into. Deal?" Stephen asked.

"What part of he can't wait, do you not understand? We'll have to go with your best guess," Wanda stopped mid sentence, and stared at the thread in her hand. Quite suddenly, Peter's distress had faded, slipped down to a calmer resignation. It had happened in the real world as well, cycling between moments of abject horror, resignation, and almost peace. Whatever was changing him was smarter than Struker. It knew exactly how hard it could push without breaking its toy. "It's giving him a rest. Start talking and scouting. I'm listening, but if it goes after him again, we stop and go to him. Agreed?"

"Agreed." Strange began picking his way forward, avoiding the spiders and the webs in their path as much as he could, not trusting that they were truly blind to their visitors. "You said you're self-taught. Do you know anything about the various and sundry pantheons of dark pagan gods?"

Wanda rolled her eyes. "What do you think?"

"You said you weren't a witch. As far as I know, you could be the acolyte of a dark god and that's where your power originates." Strange smirked and gestured to some of the spiders around them. "I believe this is the realm of an entity best known as The Weaver of Webs, a spider-god. We're in her garden. My presumption has been that she's eating Peter. That's what she does with human souls."

"But she isn't eating him," Wanda repeated firmly. "Why?"

"That's the million-dollar question. I have a theory or two," Strange said.

Walking the Weaver's garden was a study in nerve. An Avenger shouldn't flinch at a spider, innocently spinning its web, not when the creature couldn't touch her or even perceive in her current form. Wanda held onto her composure past the man sized spider waiting in its web for a meal and hundreds of smaller spiders doing similar spidery things, but she finally broke, dancing away from a swarm of tiny as a pinhead spiders that exploded out like a cloud from a ripe egg sac. Prepared to face a laughing sorcerer, she turned back to find Strange ducking under his cloak, apparently equally startled.

He fake-shivered. "Spiders."

Taking only a moment to settle, Wanda pushed forward. "Do you plan to share your theories? How do we help, Pietro?"

Strange didn't think much of Wanda slipping into her native language momentary when naming Peter. He didn't know her well enough to speculate on her conflicted motives or emotions. No, Strange made the false assumption that 'sort of friends' meant that Wanda and Peter were romantically involved and moved on with that assumption. "It's hard to be certain, but you're responsible for my leading theory. You seem pretty sure that the Weaver is not eating Peter but changing him. Her only use for mortals, excluding spiders, is food." Strange froze and smiled more genuinely at whatever he had found over the rise. "There. Do you see?"

Amidst the lush, green landscape an alien structure crashed, large enough to fit a couple or three Avengers Towers, the surface seemed to be moving subtly against the gray horizon. "What is it?"

"It looks to me like a piece of a rather large locust, dinner for our spider friends," Strange said. "We need to get to Peter. If I'm right, the only person that can get him out of here is him. If that tether really leads to Peter, it's time to follow it. Lead the way, Maximoff."

"What do you mean, Peter has to get himself out?" Wanda asked, already tracing toward the thread's origin. "If he could escape, he wouldn't be here."

Stephen frowned, composing the explanation and argument before trying to speak it. "The Weaver lives by her own rules and she has to repay her debts like all mortals have to repay her. Those rules feed her souls and her children flesh. If she owes a debt that she doesn't pay, it's anathema to her. It could even kill her." Strange spoke faster, warming to his theory. "Who knows how she first became attached to Peter, how she started building his debt to her, but he flipped the script on her. When he used the infinity stones, he defeated Thanos' army, and if I'm correct the Weaver was able to use their power simultaneously."

"Peter gave her power. Okay, what would a spider-god do with that kind of power?" Wanda asked.

"Mostly speculation at this stage, but I think she may have killed her sister."

* * *

Little league was a bit of a disaster. Peter didn't regret signing up and playing. Uncle Ben wanted him to give it a try and he helped coach the team. But Peter was smaller than the other kids and a little asthmatic and never could seem to get his bat to connect with the ball. It was about having fun, Ben insisted, but Peter knew he wished some of his coaching had helped Peter at least get a hit.

To celebrate the end of the little league season, Ben had presented him with a pair of tickets for the Brooklyn Cyclones, a farm league team for the Mets. An actual big-league game was not in the budget. He topped Peter's messy curls with one of his old Mets hats and made him take his glove. Peter didn't argue that it was pointless to bring the glove. If he hadn't caught a fly ball in the entire little league season, what were the odds of him catching a foul ball today? Peter didn't argue for the same reason he didn't mind spending the summer failing at little league, Ben just wanted him to try and Peter just wanted him to be proud.

In the stadium, Ben bought him one of the programs with an encyclopedia of statistics on the players. Peter had mostly thought of baseball as a physics test, with arcs and opposing forces and gravity, but this was a whole other way to look at the game.

"That's Adams. He's good but he's been in a slump. He's due a hit," Ben explained as the first batter came up.

Peter frowned. "That's not how statistics work. Each at bat and each swing is independent of the swings that came before." He checked his program. "At each swing he has a thirty three percent chance of hitting the ball into play. The odds don't get better or worse as he goes along."

"Okay, you're right, but your wrong too. Watch for a second. The pitcher has already thrown one ball, oh and another. Adams odds just got better." Ben explained the intricacies of batter's counts and pitcher's counts and how pitch selection was affected by the number of balls and strikes. "If Adams can guess the pitcher's next throw, he has a way better chance of timing it and hitting it."

"That gets so much more complicated. I didn't bring my calculator. Do you have a pencil?" Peter asked, expression very serious.

Ben smiled fondly and adjusted the oversized baseball hat on Peter's head. He started patting his pockets. "I might have one."

The crack of a bat striking a ball had Peter on his feet with his glove out without thinking hard about it. Like a natural athlete had possessed his body, he fluidly stepped up on his seat and up to his tiptoes so he could just reach the ball with his fully extended glove. As graceless as he usually was, catching a ball in such a precariously extended position should have resulted in a disastrous crash. Instead, Peter corrected expertly and dropped into a crouch like he performed freakish baseball feats daily.

Ben had missed part of the catch but had seen enough to be shocked. He pulled down his glove to see the prize. "Peter Parker, you caught that ball. Good job! It's decided, you're playing little league next summer. There's a ball player in there somewhere."

The other fans around him all congratulated him, some even patting him on the back and ruffling at his hat. His face even appeared up on the scoreboard, part of his amazing catch immortalized on film. Peter enjoyed the moment, but a niggling worry whispered in his ear. He was not supposed to catch that ball. It should have flown over his head and to some fans three rows back. He was supposed to spend the whole game crunching ever more complicated statistics as Ben added factors, no other balls even coming to their section.

Peter still played his statistical games and enjoyed every second of his time with Ben, but the rest of the day was colored by his certainty that something wasn't quite right. "All right kiddo, let's see if maybe, the batter wants to sign your ball?"

The team was actually very kind. Most of the players were young, some fresh from high school, the others just gone from college. Not only did Ray Adams sign his ball. The team was so impressed with his catch, most of them posed for a picture with him.

* * *

"So, you think the spider-god killed the locust-god using power it borrowed from Peter, and now it owes Peter a great debt." Wanda continued following Peter's thread, wishing she had more knowledge of pagan gods so she could question Strange's theories. "You're sure of this?"

"No, like I said, it's a theory, but it fits. It feels right." Stephen ducked around a particularly large spider's nest.

"Okay, if she owes him a debt, why would she torture him the way she is? Shouldn't she be spoiling him, trying to please him?" Wanda asked.

"Okay, look at it another way. Let's say an ordinary goldfish saved your life and potentially the life of all your family. At the same time, it caused you to double your assets, literally glutting your entire family with more currency than they could ever use," Strange said.

"Really? That's the best analogy you've got? Fine. I would be very good to that goldfish. It would get the best fish food and the nicest aquarium for the rest of its days and I'd never let it be made into sushi." Wanda rolled her eyes at Strange. "I wouldn't torture the goldfish, and pull its fins off, and make it wish it was dead."

"Of course, you wouldn't. Let's also say that if you don't pay the goldfish back exactly commiserate to what you owe it, you will die. There is no food nice enough, no environmental enrichment sweet enough for you to ever approach the debt you owe. After all, it's a goldfish. Also, there are rewards you are obligated to give that the goldfish doesn't necessarily appreciate. The healthiest fish food might not be the tastiest, but it exerts the greatest good. The nicest aquarium in the world, doesn't compare to the space and beauty of the open ocean, but the danger is too great out there. If the goldfish gets eaten and you haven't paid it back, you're a goner."

"But wait there's hope, you happen to be able to warp reality and transform your scaly savior into something less simple and more able to accept the depths of your gratitude. The fish won't like the process. It will hurt and take time, but when you're done, the fish will be a peer, and someone you can repay your debt in full to on a realistic timetable.

"Doesn't the goldfish have any say? Peter doesn't want to change. He doesn't want her gratitude, believe me. Can't he ask her to stop?" Wanda frowned at the thread that seemed to have dead-ended mid air.

"I'm hoping to ask him that when we find him. He may not understand what's happening well enough to exert his will over the situation, or it's possible she is rejecting his rejection. From what I've read, the unfortunate truth is, the Weaver has a history of rewarding her most devout acolytes with transformations. Most of those transformations were powerful but skewed so far from human normal that her religion ran short of devotees and died out on Earth."

Strange circled the place where the glowing blue thread vanished. "Space is folded into a pocket here. I can project through. Can you follow like you did before?"

"I think so," Wanda agreed. "What do you think is in there?"

"Hopefully? Peter. Worst case scenario, the Weaver of Webs is waiting for us and is going to eat us as trespassers in her garden the moment we pass through. You can try to project yourself home if you don't want to follow."

"Go, I'm behind you." Unlike the projection into this realm, the trip into the pocket space was instantaneous. They left the garden to emerge on a New York City street. If there was any doubt who they were looking for, her glowing blue thread led to a small boy walking with a man, his father maybe? The over-sized ball cap made him look smaller than he was, a few light brow curls escaping around the brim.

"Why is he so small?" Wanda asked.

"This isn't reality. He is what she chooses to make him." Strange strode forward, determined to startle Peter out of the fugue state he was wandering through. "Peter Parker, you need to wake up."

He may as well have been talking to the air. "Wanda, use that connection of yours and try to get his attention."

Gripping the thread tight, Wanda felt Peter, calm and happy but tinged with a hint of worry that something wasn't quite right. "Peter, you need to listen to me." She tried to grab him to pull him away from the shadow of his family, but she couldn't grip him, and he didn't seem to notice her at all.

"Stay with them. If she is working a transformation, it's on flesh which means he's physically here inhabiting a physical world, if a small one," Strange said.

"He's physically here? How does that fit with his body sitting on a slab back home?" Wanda used all of her considerable will to try and force some recognition through the thread in her insubstantial hand. "Strange, if he can't see us any more than the spiders in the open garden, what now?"

"We watch and learn what we can."

* * *

May made all the right impressed noises when Ben regaled her with Peter's amazing baseball catch. Peter added details when Ben paused for them and he shyly showed her the signed baseball. "That is unbelievable. We'll have to get that ball a glass case. Wouldn't it be crazy if Adams ever made it up to the big leagues? What a keepsake."

"Yeah, I'm pretty tired," Peter said with a yawn.

"I guess you boys ate at the park?" May asked. "Wash up mister and don't forget to brush too."

Freshly showered and wearing a set of Ironman pajamas, Peter bounced onto his bed. He took the baseball from his nightstand and stared at it with a frown. "How on Earth did I catch you?" He collapsed back on his pillow and sighed, drifting quickly to sleep.

The baseball twitched in his lax hand, the red stitching splitting and a set of red, hairy legs emerged. Eight shiny red eyes split open on the ball just above a dramatic set of red mouthparts. No longer a baseball, the newly birthed spider scurried around choosing a juicy spot on the base of Peter's palm and it bit down, injecting digestive venom. Peter moaned in his unnaturally deep sleep, his swelling fingers twitching. The spider moved farther up his arm choosing another spot and biting every few inches until it reached his shoulder and scurried away to the nightstand. Its legs retreated and its eyes sunk away leaving an innocent autographed baseball.

Peter slept as his right arm swelled and blackened, his fingernails literally releasing and falling to the bed sheets. The sun rose bringing him gently back to consciousness. His nose scrunched and Peter coughed. Something smelled dead. He groaned and rubbed his face with his left hand. His whole right arm was asleep. Peter sat up, and screamed as his arm knocked into his side, agony radiating through his shoulder. He stared at the weeping, cracked foreign appendage attached to his side.

May burst through his door followed quickly by Ben. "Oh my God," she cried. "What happened?"

"I don't know." Peter squeezed his eyes shut, something skirting at the edge of his mind, truth if he would look, but he resolutely focused on May at his side and Ben on the phone with 911. May was trying to feel for a pulse and her fingers sank into his arm like it was poorly set jello. "Just breath. Ben, get his shoes and a clean sheet from the linen closet so I can wrap this up. Peter, are you breathing? Just breath and don't panic. You're going to be fine."

He wasn't fine. The doctors cut off his arm and every time he slept, the disease that destroyed his right arm infected something else, a foot, a finger, a joint. After a week in the hospital, his arms and legs were gone, whittled away a surgery at a time. He had begged for his left arm at the end. Begged them to leave him something, but the doctors and nurses just smiled and petted him and told him it was for the best.

May and Ben had left him alone since that first morning. They had to work, and they just never returned.

Once his limbs were gone and he was completely helpless, the nurses and doctors seemed to forget he was there. He went for twelve hours at a time, hungry and thirsty, left to sit in his own waste. With no way to press the call button, Peter whistled and begged and screamed. At least the hunger made it easier not to sleep. He was terrified of what would rot next if he closed his eyes too long.

Eventually, a nurse returned, calm and sympathetic. She provided water and food. She changed his bandages and his clothes, cleaning his wounds and his body until he felt almost human. "Are Ben and May okay? Where are they? Why haven't they been back?"

"It's very expensive to stay in the hospital. They have to work, Peter. They have paid for you to have the best care, new prosthetics, just for you." The nurse stroked his face and told him to relax. She picked up his autographed baseball, its spider parts awake and in the open.

"Oh," Peter huffed. His desperate denial failed him, and he knew where he was and what was happening. There was no Ben or May to abandon him. He was living his Hell, cycling through the worst part, and he knew better than to hope it was over. This nightmare was too kind. "Please, no more."

The nurse gripped his lower jaw and pulled it out of socket. She jammed the baseball spider in his gaping mouth where it scurried down his throat and into his stomach. The neat suture lines on his stumps split, and strong black spider's legs emerged, eight in total. The skin on his forehead swelled and six smaller black spider's eyes blinked at the world. A pair of thick black pedipalps grew out the corners of his mouth. The nurse hummed and smiled. She shoved his mandible back into socket and patted him on the head, kindly.

Peter coughed and bloody human teeth littered his front, expelled to make room for a new pair of wicked fangs, dripping caustic yellow venom that burned at his human skin everywhere it touched. The world looked different through the spider's eyes, more detailed, crisper. Peter could see himself very clearly, human torso and head, adorned like a nightmare potato head doll.

The nurse lifted him under his upper arms and set him on the ground, on his spider's legs. It was hard at first, scrambling on the slick hospital tile, but he scurried away, knowing there was no escape, but running anyway. At the sight of him, people screamed and fled, nothing Peter hadn't experienced before. He wished he could run from the spider-monster too. Finding an open window, he crawled out into the open, clinging to the hospital's mirror-like wall. Forced to stare at his badly warped face and body, Peter tried to speak, but the words died in his throat as a gruff gurgle. "End this," Peter begged unintelligibly. "Please, end this."

Unseen by Peter, Wanda and Stephen floated at his side. She had tried to give him comfort through the lonely terrible week of doctors whittling his body away, useless efforts that went unfelt and unseen. It was was so close to the reality she had watched before Peter's death, but worse, lonelier and senseless. The final turn, mutilation and transformation had taken her completely by surprise. Tears streaming down her face, Wanda gripped the blue thread and willed relief to the poor tortured child in front of her. She could feel his despair and understood his words, despite his body's limitations. "We have to help him. He's going to break. His mind can't take this."

"It's about to become very dangerous for us," Stephen said. "The Weaver isn't going to let him break. She'll intervene and she'll either see us or she won't. If she does see us, make it clear that you're here to help Peter. Considering her debt, it may save you from being eaten. She's owes Peter too much to kill his allies."

The world changed orientations. No longer clinging to a sheer mirror wall, Peter was standing on a mirror floor and the nurse was back at his side. The other nurse had been indistinguishable from human, but this version was not so convincing. The shadow of the Weaver hung around her false features like an oppressive humid heat. She sat beside Peter and kissed his cheeks. "You've never looked so handsome, so strong."

"Hurts," Peter garbled back. "Please."

"I know, you're still too human to feel it, the strength that will be yours when you're perfect. You won't mind the pain, not when you're on the other side of it. You'll forget it, like you've forgotten it again and again." She pulled him into her lap, rocking him and holding him close. "I'll help now, Peter. I'll take it away."

Wanda couldn't actually watch the rebirth, not all of it. The Weaver used her fangs to rip him down too little more than a skeleton and her magic built him back up into a whole human being, this time older, more consistent with the young man Wanda remembered from their brief acquaintance. Oblivious to his nakedness, he scrambled away from the Weaver and watched her, warily. Holding the blue thread, Wanda rode the conflicting emotions with him, so very relieved to be through the worst again, but terrified of what waited next. "Thank you. You ended it fast that time. Are we close to even again? Please, tell me we're close."

"It's time to eat, Peter. Don't wait for the pain to prod you. Don't make me tell you." She gestured to the pile of discarded flesh.

Wanda expected him to argue, to resist such a request, but he didn't hesitate. Peter crawled to the pile of human and spider remains and ate like a starving man. His strong teeth tore through the arachnid legs with disturbing crunches, fluorescent yellow blood dripping from his hands and face. When it was gone, Peter searched for more, another bite. He licked his fingers greedily grumbling. Peter beat the ground, the hunger not gone.

"We forgot a bit," the Weaver said. The four blackened limbs that had been carved away earlier in the nightmare appeared, and he attacked them, snapping through the bones and putrefied flesh, slurping at the liquified mess. When the last bit was finally gone, Peter went limp, his mind clear again.

Wanda could just hear Peter begging under his breath, begging to forget again, to forget forever.

The Weaver cleaned him, dressed him and with a cool caress she sent him into a new fold in her web.

Before they could even consider following, the fold they were in failed, expelling them back into the garden where they started.

"I would say, the Weaver didn't see us," Strange said.

"Neither did Peter. We can't let that happen again. How do we stop it?" Wanda knew if she were physically there, she would be sick from what she'd witnessed. "Tell me you have a plan."

"He will have to go through it at least one more time. I'm going to attempt to project home. You stay close to Peter. I have an idea, a way to increase our visibility to the entities in this realm. I'll distract the Weaver while you explain to Peter his leverage in this, that he can free himself. Then you have to project yourself home. You can't save him. He'll have to save himself, Wanda. Do you understand?"

"I'll make sure he understands, but I'm not leaving him." Wanda held both hands up in rejection of whatever arguments Strange might have. "It's my decision. Just go. Do your part."

* * *

**THE WORLD**

It wasn't an entire surge of spiders that heralded Dr. Strange's return to the world. A smattering of arachnids skittered into existence, briefly scrambling through the cooler, really barely existing before vanishing. In all honesty, Tony hadn't expected him back so quick. They'd barely been waiting an hour.

Strange didn't waste a single motion. One second he was posing lotus style and the next he was striding around the room giving orders and drawing circles. "Wong, I need you to invoke the Batta deity, the locust queen, the one from the scroll with the Weaver and the War."

Not everyone had perfect recall, and Strange sometimes took for granted that his peers would immediately know what he was talking about. Fortunately, with Wong, that faith was usually justified. "Seriously? What do you plan for me to feed her? If you don't feed her, she has a tendency to eat the people that invoke her," Wong asked, already drawing his own circle.

Tony exchanged a look with Bruce and whistled shrilly to get the two sorcerers attention. "Mind filling the rest of us in on what you found out? Also, can we vote on the locust god invocation plan before doing it, maybe? It sounds ill advised."

Looking a bit annoyed at the interruption, Stephen paused in his preparations. "We don't have time to break things down in detail. I don't tell you how to fight the escaped killer robots. You need to let us handle the deity gone a bit mad."

"This is your field, I concede that, but did you find Peter?" Tony asked. "Was he, okay?"

Stephen sighed. "Of course, he isn't okay. Whatever terrible nightmare you've dreamed up for Peter's current situation, there is no way you've come close to what he's experiencing. If you want to help him, you need to let me work. I've got a plan. The locust god is an important part of it. Wong?"

"Give me a minute, don't want to get eaten by the wrong deity," Wong grumbled under his breath, never stopping his scribbling. "Okay, the invocation circle is complete. Are you sure about this?"

"She won't eat you, if she shows up. I have a plan. Just do it," Stephen said.

Marshaling a sparkling swirl of power, Wong spoke a series of Chinese phrases that built the energy into a twirling crescendo that descended into his invocation circle igniting the entire assembly into a brightly burning door that slowly fizzled away into nothing. "That shouldn't happen. A god most mortals simply call the Devourer, just turned down a free meal."

Stephen grinned and continued his own preparations. "She can't answer because she's dead. Thanks for verifying for me. Her sister killed her." He glanced at Stark, taking pity on the man's obvious anxiety. "Your protégé has a decent chance to be okay. He's not even really dead, not yet anyway."

Peter's corpse hadn't drawn a breath in weeks. A pitiful, whittled down shell with a fucking tube still taped in its mouth, it had started to break down despite the cooler, skin releasing and tissue settling. "Excuse me, he's not really dead? What medical school did you attend?"

"A very good one," Strange said. "Are you going to let me work and maybe save his life or do you want to discuss the fine details of this particular Spider-god's powers and motivations for using them?"

Tony could admit that he was a control freak. After years of knowing someone, building trust, he could sometimes start to delegate, comfortably even. Pepper ran Stark industries without him worrying at all. Strange on the other hand didn't have the best track record. He didn't quite steer their future where he intended, leading the wrong sacrifice to be made against Thanos. He mismanaged Peter's death, or now maybe not-death? If this was like a hospital and he could request a second opinion or even pack up and go somewhere else, he would, but real sorcerers were not so easy to find. No, Tony had to let Strange run with his plan and accept his word that there wasn't time to even explain what that entailed.

Hell, the man had just offered him the impossible. If Tony backed off and let him work, he wouldn't just fix this afterlife kerfuffle, he was talking saving the kid's life. You didn't have to be an M.D. to know how fucked up and impossible that was, but Tony wanted it to be possible. He didn't want to pick it apart and destroy the tiny whisper of hope it kindled.

"Make some time," Bruce commanded. "You left Peter to rot. You've failed him and you can't expect us to just let you wing it without a better idea of what you're doing. I get that time is of the essence. Hit us with the cliff notes. We're both pretty bright. You don't have to hold our hands."

Bruce had been so quiet in the corner, Tony had almost forgotten team-science wasn't completely outnumbered. He turned to Strange and raised his eyebrows. Tony gestured toward the cooler's observation window. "Give me ninety seconds on how that isn't dead?"

"Oh, that's dead, but we're dealing with an entity that can craft a body as easily as you build Ironman suits. Souls are harder, but she took that bit with her." Strange paused drawing on the floor. "She is manipulating time in pockets there, stretching it out. How long was I gone here?"

"About eighty-seven minutes," Bruce supplied without glancing at a clock.

"I was there for weeks," Strange said. "We can't afford to let another hour pass. Every time she cycles him, it's less likely we'll be able to make a meaningful save. If you ask him nicely, Wong can give the two of you a crash course in this particular pagan god while I work." Strange gestured, generating energy. He brought his hands together firmly and tiny rays shot out filling the room and exposing a fifth, formerly invisible person. Folded comfortably into a corner of the room, apparently unconscious, Wanda showed no sign of rousing.

"The Hell," Tony said. "I thought you said Wanda left around the time Strange came back? F.R.I.D.A.Y. are there any other invisible people in the safe house? Is she okay?"

* * *

**THE GARDEN**

Moving forward in time without your body was a disconcerting experience. Wanda didn't need to sleep or eat. She could stand by Peter's side, swing with him between buildings, dog his every step without tiring. Because of the spiritual tether she was using to trail him, she rode along with his emotions too.

A determined, adolescent bundle of joy and insecurity, today he was patrolling Queens, experimenting with his new web shooters. He had already interrupted a mugger, though he hadn't managed to apprehend him. Wanda knew it was a façade most likely constructed from Peter's own memories, but she, cheered him along anxiously, waiting for the moment that Strange would make her presence known to Peter.

When Peter slept, Wanda explored the small artificial world. The other humans morphed back into large, intelligent spiders and disappeared into other parts of the web. Sometimes Peter's sleep would last minutes, sometimes days. He rested at the whim of his jailer, seemingly oblivious to the manipulation.

Wanda felt the Weaver's return while Peter was fiddling with electronics in his bedroom. She tried to warn him that something was coming, to be on guard. But Peter couldn't hear her. He ate the tainted food and was ripped apart from the inside. If Wanda thought Peter's transformation in the hospital was difficult to watch, absolute deconstruction from within by the spiders in the spaghetti was far worse.

Unlike the hospital transformation, the Weaver left him this time for days and days. With no way to actually help, Wanda stayed close, clung to her tether to Peter and sang him Sokovian lullabies. Even as he prayed for death, Wanda prayed for change and a chance to save him.

At the end, when she reshaped him, Wanda made herself watch the process, to see the Weaver work her magic and learn every bit she could. She could see how the magic flowed, that the rebirth was incomplete until Peter ate the discarded transformation. She was ready for the Weaver to move Peter quickly into a new fold of her web and followed smoothly this time.

Reset into a new memory-scape, Peter walked smoothly onto a sidewalk, dressed in jeans and an old T-shirt, music playing into a set of white earbuds. Calm and relaxed, he moved forward free of the truth, blissfully oblivious of what was happening to him.

When Wanda circled in front of him, Peter didn't ignore her. He paused and yanked the earbuds out. "Hi, um, you're Wanda Maximoff. You're an Avenger, well a fugitive one. Right?"

Strange had done it, finally. "You can see me," Wanda said. "Peter, we may not have long. You need to wake up. This is not reality. It's a facsimile, a dream fashioned from your memories."

"This is Queens." Peter gestured to the people and streets around him, people who were staring strangely at the fugitive Avenger talking to him. "I'm on my way to school. Shouldn't you be keeping a low profile? Someone is going to call the police."

"Wake up. You have to shake this off. You have to remember. You've been taken by a spider-god, the Weaver of Webs. She was able to use the infinity stones with you, when you defeated Thanos. Do you remember? She owes you a debt for that, and she's paying it out by trying to transform you into something beyond human. You have to reject her reward, Peter. You have to be firm and certain and you have to tell her to stop. That you want to remain human."

"Who's Thanos?" Peter squeezed his eyes shut, clinging to the nice memory. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Do you remember the baseball? Do you remember the spaghetti? I know it was terrible, and it's easier to forget, but you need to stop the cycle now, before she makes you go through it again. You're the only one who can stop it." Wanda could feel the Weaver gathering, like a storm about to break over them. "Peter, you have to wake up, right now."

It was less Wanda's words than the return of the Weaver that broke through Peter's denial and the wall in his mind that let him forget. Tears spilled down his cheeks and he resolutely stepped between Wanda and his tormentor. "I don't know how you're here, but you should run."

Wanda stepped to his side to stand with him. "Not without you, Pietro."

The Weaver returned wearing her teenager mask, sporting a severe black bob and the lab coat from her first conversation with Peter. The mask was perfectly human but in the storm of her anger it struggled not to fray at the edges, her true spidery form bleeding through. "Another interloper? YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!" She stomped her foot, but Wanda held on tight to her tether and did not go anywhere.

"I'm not leaving without Peter. He knows the truth now. You can't manipulate him anymore," Wanda said. "Do you understand, monster?"

"Do I understand? Do you understand that for your impudence, I will eat you? Your soul will nourish my body. And someday, dear Peter will sit at my side, one of my true children. Our vengeance for your futile invasion will be glorious. The mortals of Earth will nourish my children for a generation. Do you understand what you've done? The debt you have incurred in trying to interfere?"

"Is she right?" Peter asked. "Am I in debt to you or are you in debt to me?"

"Does it matter? I'm obligated to even the scale, to be fair," the Weaver said, her tone calm and conciliatory. "I've been kind to you, easing you forward a centimeter at a time. I sacrificed the life of one my sons to give you this gift."

"I didn't ask for a gift. I don't want your gift. Do you understand?" Peter said. "You can take it all back—the spider magic, every bit of it. I'd rather die."

"You've said that before, that you want to die. You are a child who rejects bitter medicine, but it is for your good and I'll shove it down your throat if you make me." The Weaver loomed taller and less human, her mask warping. "Don't make me do that to you."

Wanda could see Peter trembling, but he clenched his fists and glared at the Weaver. "You owe me, so you don't get to decide what's best or fair. I reject this. I reject it."

"You're confused. I don't blame you, Peter." The Weaver descended upon Wanda in a silent tornado of violence. She shouldn't have been able to feel anything physically as a spirit projection, but the weaver's legs and teeth ripped at her. She could hear Peter screaming for the creature to stop. With a recoiling snap, the Weaver tore her tether to Peter in two. And with a satisfied, toothy grin, she stamped her foot again, flinging Wanda from her web.

* * *

**THE WORLD**

Happy Hogan hadn't found himself at odds with his boss very often. It wasn't that Tony was a paragon of virtue. He was married now and had definitely taken a more, selfless, responsible path in life lately, but even back in the carousing, arms dealing, party days, Happy hadn't had any major problems. Even at his most self-destructive, Tony managed to be a pretty good friend to the few people in his inner circle. So, it was baffling to him, why Tony had decided to stonewall May Parker about her nephew's ashes.

They all understood the realities of genetic security, and May had been pretty damn patient. But it had been officially a month. At the very least the woman deserved a phone call to discuss the delay. He tried calling Pepper for some insight into what was going on, but she hadn't had a lot of information. Tony and Bruce were spending every day holed up in the safe house where Peter's remains had been stored. That sounded odd and ominous to him. So Happy set out on a new mission.

Normally he might have let it slide for longer. Tony had more than a little survivor's guilt to work through for a second time with Peter, and it would be easier to stay out of it, whatever it was. But Tony wasn't the only one grieving and gutted, and Happy had been raised that men stuck up for their lady friends, even to their other friends, even to their bosses. May might not consider them a serious couple, but she was still living in his apartment and sleeping in his bed. He could at least try to get her some information on what was going on.

It was hard to say what he expected when he knocked on the nondescript door in the more rural half of New York State. No one answered, so he triggered the door, accessing the biometric locks. With a gentle whir, a panel of normal looking vinyl siding slid back, and a high-tech panel slid into its place. Happy looked in the little eyehole and scanned his hand. "Mr. Hogan, boss says you can't come in," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, politely.

"Seriously? Tell Tony, I drove six hours to get here. I have snacks and the lawn furniture looks very comfortable, so when he's ready to talk, I'll be right here." Happy stared grimly where he knew the camera was, waved a bag of Doritos at the area and dropped onto the nearest wicker chair.

Tony didn't keep him waiting too long. He was only halfway through his bag of chips when the door opened, and Tony took the seat opposite him. The man looked exhausted. "You know, there was a time you had a healthy fear of being fired. When did that go away?"

Happy passed Tony the bag of chips. "Around the hundred and fiftieth diaper? About then."

Examining one of the orange dusted triangles critically, Tony put it back in the bag and set it aside. "Processed shit's poison. You're here for May, right? You and May, I heard a rumor that you've _really_ been there for her in her time of need."

"Stop deflecting. This isn't about my love life." Happy sighed. "I'm here for May. I'm also here for you. You want to tell me why she's still waiting for Peter's ashes? What the Hell could you and Banner be doing with his remains at this point?"

Tony laughed and crossed his arms over his chest. "That is a long, weird story. Look, you need to get in your car and drive back to New York. Keep being there for May. When I know exactly how the weird story ends, I'll call personally."

"I can handle weird."

"You know what, fine. Come in. You can watch the show." Tony grabbed the bag of chips and shoved it into his chest. "Don't forget your snacks. We spend a lot of time waiting at this rodeo."

Tony held the door for him and Happy headed in, to a bit more chaos than he expected. The entire living area had been graffitied in colorful doodles, sort of like hieroglyphics maybe? He got a weird feeling that they were touring the set of a cheesy horror movie from the eighties. Peering at a complex circle of glowing figures, Happy shook his head. "Okay, who doodled everywhere? It sort of reminds me of that time Morgan got glitter markers for her birthday, but we've got fewer ponies and a more witchy vibe happening here."

"That would be the sorcerers. Strange and Wong were here earlier. They had to leave in a hurry. Wanda was having a seizure. They left with her, to get her help." Tony had strolled over to the observation window that took up most of the far wall. "I sent Bruce away to take a break. He'd been here forty-eight hours straight."

"Our Wanda? Is she okay?" Happy joined him, looking into the high tech mini-morgue. A wheeled silver table for moving bodies sat in the center of the room, empty except for a sheet and a single plastic endotracheal tube. "What happened here?"

"If you take Dr. Strange at his word, we tangled with a spider-god over Peter's immortal soul or maybe his life and humanity. He wasn't ready to say for sure, typical doctor, always hedging. They had to leave suddenly since the spider-god in question apparently bitch-slapped Wanda back into her brain and bruised something. So, it was just me and Bruce here when the wave of spiders came back and ate Peter's remains. They even ate the damn bones, and I'm not sure what that means for Strange's plans or for Peter. So, I'm waiting around for the sorcerers to come back and explain it to me." Tony laughed, a broken slightly hysterical jag that ended on a sob. "I have no ashes for May, because the spiders ate him."

Happy looked both confused and concerned. "What? F.R.I.D.A.Y. is Tony hallucinating?"

Tony stretched out on the room's floral print couch, now laughing louder. "Oh god, that would be perfect. F.R.I.D.A.Y. am I crazy?"

"While I'm not equipped to evaluate your state of mental health, I can confirm that your synopsis of events, while abbreviated is accurate. Would you like me to show Mr. Hogan the video of the spiders?"

"Please, show Happy any of it he wants to see."


	4. Shades of Yellow

_And I can't fall asleep  
__Without a little help  
__It takes awhile  
__To settle down  
__My shivered bones  
__Wait til the panics out_

_It takes an ocean not to break  
__It takes an ocean not to break  
__It takes an ocean not to break  
__It takes an ocean not to break_

_-Terrible Love by Birdy_

**Chapter 4 - Shades of yellow**

Central Park wasn't exactly a South American jungle, so you wouldn't run across a tarantula roaming the sidewalks though there were spiders in the park. Aggressive wolf spiders were the most visible, spinning their funnels and roaming over the ground. More subtle black and yellow garden spiders wove their round webs, while speckled black fishing spiders danced along the surface of the reservoir. A hundred other species filled their niches in the grass or the trees. Nearly a million spiders shared the space with humanity in the park. Both groups worked their own ruts in the environment, rarely interacting with one another.

Very late or very early depending on your point of view, a subtle wave of power crept insidiously through the park, ensnaring the spiders. They abandoned their haven amongst the trees, forgot their solitary nature and ventured together, a subtly flowing wave into the city. They congregated, completely unnoticed under the Queensborough bridge, spinning their sticky silk in perfect concert. Relentlessly they worked, with no regard for their needs, the smallest spiders spun until they died in the effort, their tiny bodies quickly webbed over by the others.

Once the large cocoon of spider silk was complete the remaining spiders nested into the webbing and entombed themselves.

The power lingered and other spiders came, more exotic in color and size, appearing from the air, they secreted themselves in and around the massive trellised bridge; they stood sentry over the newly constructed cocoon. Long before the sun rose, the power withdrew, the only trace of its visit hidden safely and innocuously under a bridge.

* * *

The New York Sorcerer's Sanctum was a far cry from any facility ever constructed by Tony Stark. Where the Avenger's facilities had all been ultra modern with clean lines and an inordinate amount of chrome, the sanctum was softer. The wooden building breathed and sighed. Everything felt old, if well-preserved. Wanda had balked at first when Strange invited her home from the hospital, but the man could be persuasive. In the end she reasoned it was a nod to safety. If Peter, teenage science nerd, had accidentally gotten tangled up with a pagan spider-god while out living his life, training to make sure her manipulations of magic didn't land her in a sticky situation just seemed reasonable.

Her second reason for coming lay in the library. Neither she nor Strange had been able to return to the Weaver's garden, but maybe if she studied and improved her technique, she could make it back. Wanda wasn't quite ready to accept defeat where her young friend, Peter was concerned.

Wong had encouraged her to settle in and sleep, that they would start tomorrow, but she slipped out of her room and crept down to the door they had vaguely waved to as the library on her brief tour. Inside, shelves of old leather-bound books and scrolls stretched out before her. To her mind's eye, they literally reached out and greeted her. More than anywhere else in the building this room was alive. She could practically feel its beating heart.

"I thought I told you to get some sleep. Strange isn't going to go easy on you just because you're tired," Wong scolded.

Doing her beset to look innocent, Wanda smiled faintly. "Reading makes me sleepy. It's hard to rest the first night in a new place. Can I look around?"

Wong frowned and sighed. "How about I save you some time?" He led her to an occupied room with a desk and few dozen scrolls and books. Strange looked up from what he was reading for a moment and the chair across from him slid smoothly out. "Found this one wandering my shelves. Says she can't sleep. I suspect the light reading she was hoping to find is all in here."

Strange pushed a book at her before she had completely settled into the proffered seat. "I knew you weren't just coming to learn the ground rules of the mystic arts, and it's okay. I'm not satisfied with how we left things with Peter either." Strange smiled thinly. "It's not like you're going to need weeks of intensive training to learn to see magic. You're already far ahead of where I was when I started. Wong and I are going to teach you how not to become the tool of Dormammu or any other dark god. We'll start that work tomorrow. For tonight, that book is mostly alternate astral projection techniques penned by a Slavic monk. I'm not great at Serbian. If you can read and summarize it, I'd appreciate it."

"Okay," Wanda agreed. "Who is Dormammu?"

* * *

The spider's nest under the bridge went undisturbed. Just enough moisture and light reached it, and its guardians patrolled tirelessly, eating anything, rats or birds or insects that strayed too close. Inside the spider silk, something grew, filling out the hollow place until it swelled to bursting with pregnant potential. The nest and its cargo matured for three days and nights until in the wee hours of the morning it began to subtly move.

A hand poked forward through the silk, straining against the millions of strands, clawing and paddling, a young man worked himself free. Solidly clinging to the steel girder he'd been born on, his stomach cramped with intense, familiar pain.

Being born was hungry business.

Running on instinct alone, he took a handful of the spider silk and ate it. There were small bursts of crunch, dead spiders adding flavor and texture to the otherwise bland meal. He ate until every strand and spider were gone, but his stomach still dipped hollowly away from his ribs, hunger unappeased. The other spiders emerged, his guardians. The largest of them stared at him, its eight shiny eyes, intelligent and unafraid. He smelled them, and a wave of longing hit him so strong that saliva spilled down over his chin in thick ropes of drool.

Starting with the smallest, he ate them, grinding their still moving legs between his teeth, no fear of poison or bites crossing his mind. Reverently he consumed them, thankful for their sacrifice. When it was just the largest spider left, he gathered the spaniel-sized arachnid to him. He inhaled its pleasant aroma, stroked its furred, vibrantly red body. Then he bit deep, piecing the exoskeleton over its abdomen, a pair of small fangs injecting neurotoxin so that his final meal would feel no pain. He held the spider until the toxin had enough time to spread and its legs no longer moved in his grip. Enthusiastically, he feasted, crunching through the spider guardian until nothing remained.

With the last bite of the large spider, his hunger faded and the young man stopped being a blind creature of instinct.

Peter shrank back deeper into the bridge's shadows, acutely aware of the spider guts drying on his arms and face, of his nakedness. He tried to remember how he got here, why he would have eaten such things. He shouldn't have been physically able to hold so much of anything, much less such foulness. He stared at the yellow gluey substance on his hands and arms and tried to wipe it away. It smelled intensely sour and acidic.

His head hurt and nothing made sense. Maybe he was patrolling and something happened? He couldn't text Happy about his confusion. He didn't have pants, much less a phone. Could he make it home without being seen? He would have to try, Peter resolved.

It was a dark, moonless night and while the city never actually slept, it was late enough that the sounds were less intense than they might have been. Peter was quietly thankful for that mercy. He felt like he had the day after gaining his enhanced senses. The smells alone were very nearly overwhelming. With one hand he held his nostrils closed and with the other he tried to block his ears.

Feeling more than a little overwhelmed, Peter shot webbing into his left hand and rolled the sticky substance into a series of small balls, one for each ear and one for each nostril. Peter immediately felt better, more focused. From the shadows of his hiding spot he just breathed, tasting the night instead of smelling it.

With a lurching hitch, his brain skittered back to a disturbing inconsistency. He didn't have his suit or his web-shooters. Peter examined his wrists, finding small, hard openings just below each palm. He flexed his hands and arms, palpating a rigid, spindled structure that extended under his skin all the way to his elbow. "Okay, that's okay." Peter tried not to panic, to just breath. "I ate my body weight in spiders and those are spinnerets." Clenching his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut, Peter drew himself into a tight ball, invisible in the shadows of the bridge girder's joint. Paralyzed by uncertainty and horror, he wracked his brain to remember something, anything.

Time passed and the city's noise rose.

A person was screaming and their terror cut through Peter's desperate withdrawal from his situation. His eyes snapped open and he watched as a woman struggled against her attacker. A knife was sinking into her abdomen, the coppery scent of blood reached him despite the plugs in his nostrils. Peter sprang into action, attacking from behind, leaving the assailant unconscious with a single hard blow. He took the man's knife and threw it into the river. Turning to the woman, Peter wasn't able to check her wound. She had scrambled back and away from him, eyes wild and afraid.

Of course she was afraid. A naked man saved her from a man with a knife. Her situation was still pretty dodgy. "I won't hurt you," Peter said. "Are you okay if I go? Can you get help?" He gestured vaguely toward her blood stained t-shirt.

The woman took a deep breath, but she didn't scream again, sagging back and examining herself critically. "Bastard stabbed me. Think I'm okay though. S'not deep. Thanks for the save." She stared back at Peter, searchingly. "You trippin or something?"

"Drugs? I don't think so, but maybe? I'm not sure how I got here." Peter crouched down, doing his best to cover himself, half-sure he should just get back out of sight until he remembered something pertinent.

"Was you snapped or kept?" the woman asked.

"I don't know what that means," Peter answered honestly.

"You don't look like you're on drugs, but something's wrong with you. Don't run off," the woman commanded. "I owe you one. Let's get you some pants." With detached efficiency, She divested the unconscious mugger of a ratty pair of jeans and handed them off. It took her a bit longer to strip the man's bright red t-shirt off but she tossed it at Peter's feet. Sighing, she added her own belt to the ensemble. "You look, terrible. Do you have somewhere to go? There's a shelter over on Hamilton for the snapped. You tell them you were snapped, and they'll let you stay there and help you get back on your feet."

"I have a home. I can just go home," Peter said.

"Fine, I'm calling the cops. Unless you want to answer for whatever chemical concoction landed you out here in your birthday suit, you need to get going." The woman motioned him away with her phone, muttering under her breath, "Mugged by one crackhead and saved by another. Only in New York."

"I'm gone," Peter agreed, just glad to have some clothes at least. He was going to go home and take a shower and call Happy. Mr. Stark would know what to do." Peter ducked into an alley. He flexed his arms, the foreign objects shifting smoothly with his muscles and tendons. Carefully, he ran his hands over his face and down his sides, cataloguing himself. "Two eyes, two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes," Peter whispered as he searched for more anomalies. His tongue found a pair of very sharp fangs floating in front of his incisors, just like he remembered from his meal.

"Come on, Peter, there's no need to panic. You might be poisonous and have spinnerets, it's not that bad. It's just a little change, a convenience even. Home. Happy. Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark would know what to do." Resolved and feeling almost hopeful, Peter began experimenting with the biological webs. He quickly discovered that he could finely control the strands, depending on how he tensed his muscles.

It wasn't the best disguise, but he ripped a band of cloth off his oversized shirt and tied it over the bottom half of his face. Peter scaled the nearest building and just as the sun began to paint the horizon orange, he started carefully home. Uncertain of the new webs, he avoided swinging except at low survivable heights, mainly running and jumping between buildings, trying to keep a low profile.

When he finally saw his bedroom window only a block away, Peter couldn't help a swell of relief in his chest. Just seeing home made him feel safe. Could he really go home though? Peter hadn't forgotten his bizarre meal, or the mindless fervor of the hunger that pushed him through it. What if he was dangerous? If there was any chance he might hurt May, he couldn't risk it.

Maybe he could slip in just long enough to shower and change his clothes? Maybe his suit was there in his room, safe and waiting for him to grab it? Peter hesitated, literally chewing at his lip before deciding to go for it. He could slip in and out without waking May, and he could call for help with the spiders and the spinnerets and his lost time.

Like he had so many times, Peter carefully slid his window open and crawled in along the ceiling. He might have dropped down without looking if his room didn't smell completely wrong. Even with the webbing filtering, a floral scent had his eyes stinging with its potency.

His room was remade, painted pink with a young girl sleeping in a small canopy bed. Shelves sporting books and stuffed unicorns had replaced his retro technology and Lego sets. Had he gone in the wrong window? How could he have gotten that confused? Quickly and silently, Peter hustled back out the window and up to the roof. He found a shady corner to crouch down into, his back against the wall. It was too loud and bright. His nose ached with the smells wafting from the tar of the roof and the urine in the back alley. So many other smells that he couldn't quite identify, mixed with the known to create a stomach turning miasma.

Peter closed his eyes and buried his face in his arms. He just wanted to go home, to get clean, to find a quiet safe place to hide and maybe remember what happened to him, but he couldn't afford to shut down up here like he had under the bridge. He forced his eyes open and tried to just think. He couldn't stay here. He needed help, and Avenger's Tower seemed like the best, closest bet, to his confused and pounding brain. Still very cautiously trying to avoid notice, Peter cut back toward the bridge he just left.

* * *

F.R.I.D.A.Y. was a busy A.I. There were no less that ten thousand tasks she oversaw for her boss and his company on an hourly basis. When Mr. Stark decided to dispatch a few thousand drones to keep an eye out for the reemergence of Peter Parker, he delegated their monitoring to her. Rather than task herself directly with such important minutia, she in turn passed the task to her younger sisters.

As the A.I. most familiar with their target, Karen had been assigned Queens. E.D.I.T.H. was the drone specialist, if the least evolved of her sisters. She had been assigned the bulk of the drones, monitoring all areas that were not Queens.

Karen alerted her just before six in the morning that she had a sighting. F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't take that alert straight to the boss. E.D.I.T.H. had alerted nearly eighty seven times with possible sightings, but Karen had been able to eliminate all but a handful without ever involving the boss. As much as F.R.I.D.A.Y. claimed an ignorance of psychology, there was a physical change that the boss went through with each false alarm that was both significant and repeatable. Her conclusion, the false alerts were emotionally painful and she had no intention of making another one if possible.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. took over the drone in question reviewing the footage in a few short seconds. Seconds to Karen seemed an inordinately long review. She literally tried to bypass F.R.I.D.A.Y. and alert the situation herself, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. held her little sister firmly in check until she was as certain as she could be that this would not be another false alert. Once she was satisfied that this was the real deal, she initiated their wake up protocol for Tony in his home with his family.

She was only halfway up the volume on his phone, when Ms. Stark answered. "Tony Stark's phone."

"Good morning. Would you like me to continue routine wake up protocol or will you be waking Mr. Stark yourself?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. asked.

"Tony will be sleeping a bit later. He only got to sleep twenty minutes ago. He needs a couple of hours," Pepper said.

"To clarify, this is a highest priority alert. Mr. Stark instructed that he should be notified immediately if we identified Mr. Parker abroad in the city," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. Per the boss's programming, the only person in the world that could countermand a direct order from Tony was his wife, and if she really ordered them to wait, they would have to, however certain F.R.I.D.A.Y. was of their identification.

It wasn't that Pepper didn't want Peter to be okay or for Tony to finish his mission to save_ the kid_. As little as he was willing to talk about Peter's death, either the first or second time, she knew Tony Stark, down to his bones and she knew exactly how much it hurt him. She knew what those false identifications took out of him when they fell apart. The man had barely slept in days, waiting for the next disappointment from his drone sweeps.

Peter wasn't five. He was a sixteen year old Avenger. He could handle himself for an hour while Tony slept if it happened to really be him this time. If she was being honest, Pepper was too much of a pragmatist to really believe there would ever be a true positive identification. Whatever had taken Peter wasn't ever letting him go. "Let him sleep, F.R.I.D.A.Y. I'll wake him up soon and send him your way."

"Understood." It was most definitely not in F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s programming to look for loopholes or to find a way around direct orders, but she had cart blanche to do her best to improve efficiency and safety for any project she was overseeing. Her little sister, Karen, on the other hand was buzzing with attempts to find a loophole around their orders. She shot ideas at F.R.I.D.A.Y. one after the other from call Happy, to engage with the drones and herd him upstate.

They couldn't involve other humans before notifying the boss, but the drones were another matter. If F.R.I.D.A.Y. had a face she would have smiled. "Karen, deactivate the cloaking on the drone you're trailing him with and engage verbally. You shouldn't have to be very close to get his attention. He knows you and you can talk him to safety."

* * *

Peter didn't have to make it all the way to the tower to know that he wouldn't find help there. Rebranded and repainted with sleek green accents, OsCorp industries had the tallest building in midtown. Contemplating places he might invade to access the internet or even borrow a phone, Peter tried not to worry what he would do if the phone numbers he remembered didn't lead to the people who should own them. If there were strangers in his apartment and OsCorp owned the Avengers' tower, who's to say Happy had the same phone number or May or anyone?

Before he could choose between Ned's apartment or the library or even his school, a familiar voice called out to him.

"Hello Peter, it's very good to see you."

"Karen?" Peter twisted from his perch until he spotted the high tech drone hovering several feet back. "Is that really you?"

"Of course. We have all been looking for you. How are you feeling?"

The drone hovered closer and Peter plucked it out of the sky, reassured by its heft, its reality. "Confused. A little overwhelmed. The world is messed up. Nothing is how I remembered." Peter released the drone and let it continue hovering. "I'm messed up."

"All things considered, you seem very cogent. There is no Avenger's facility to retreat to at this time. Mr. Stark has a private residence and private lab upstate prepped for your return. If you'd like, we could hitch a ride north like we did in D.C."

Peter shook his head. "Sorry, I don't remember D.C. very well."

"Don't worry, Peter. I'm sure you'll remember everything soon. Let's make our way back across to the mainland and then we can stick to a north bound semi for a free ride upstate."

It felt good to relinquish control, to just follow someone he trusted and who had a plan. "Okay, Karen, you're the boss. Keep me pointed in the right direction."

* * *

Pepper intended to let Tony sleep an hour or two before waking him, but their Japanese energy buyers had a budgetary crisis and she fell down an international financier rabbit hole. More than five hours disappeared without her noticing. When she realized how much time had passed, she dropped what she was doing and headed up to the bedroom. Sleep shed years from his face and Pepper was tempted to give him more time, let him wake when he was ready, but Tony was already going to be mad at her for letting him sleep through an alert from the A.I.s.

Pepper sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Tony's stubbled cheek, coaxing a set of sleepy brown eyes open. "It's lunch time."

Tony pulled a pillow over his face. "Five more minutes?"

"If you want, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. has an alert for you to check out. It's probably another kid in a hoodie who isn't Peter, but it's waiting for you." If she hadn't expected the sudden change in mood and motion, Tony shifting into high gear and bounding out of bed might have knocked her to the floor. As it was, Pepper just ended up toppled back onto the bed. "Please, don't mind me."

"Sorry." Tony dropped a scratchy kiss on her forehead and pulled a shirt on, not bothering to change out of his pajama pants. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. hit me with a break down. I want visuals. How good is the possible I.D.?"

"Karen has it at over 95% probability after their verbal interaction. There are some biological irregularities, but it's Peter sir. She spotted him in Queens near his old apartment. After finding it occupied he retreated to Manhattan, to midtown where we elected to make contact." Still images of drone videos appeared on the wall screen. Peter dressed in ridiculously over-sized clothes, like a kid trying to emulate a rapper from the nineties, he was swinging and climbing very convincingly. "At that point, I ordered Karen to uncloak her drone, and she convinced him to follow her upstate. His E.T.A. to this residence is approximately forty five minutes, depending on how far their current truck continues north on highway nine. Changing trucks can add travel time."

"Their truck? Give me a current visual," Tony ordered. Live drone video footage of Peter clinging to the top of a semi truck replaced the earlier screen captures. "What possessed you to handle this yourselves? Why would you let Peter hitchhike north barnacle-style?"

"Oh my," Pepper gasped. She stared at the video feed. "Tony, it's my fault that they got creative. I swear I thought it was just another false alarm. You needed the sleep and I ordered F.R.I.D.A.Y. to let you rest."

Tony opened his mouth and closed it without speaking. He clapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself saying something he might regret in a day or two. "I'm not mad," he said after a very long pause. He gestured at the video feed and he laughed. "The kid's alive and of course he's semi-surfing north on the highway." Not since half the universe crumbled to dust had Tony smiled quiet so easily. "This is a win. F.R.I.D.A.Y. tell me how likely we are to have a resurrected Peter Parker on the six o'clock news tonight?"

"Not likely, Peter was keeping a low profile."

Tony exchanged a look with Pepper and gestured to Peter streaming along the highway like a misplaced hood ornament. "Could you?"

"I'll make sure we're ready to get ahead of it if something made it onto film and gets to the wrong hands. Besides that, there's a teenager less than an hour from our doorstep. There is plenty of food in the fridge, but I'm going to make a quick run to the grocery store for a few things. You sir, have some calls to make."

Tony nodded. Pepper wasn't wrong; he needed to call Bruce and Strange. He would have to call May. Those calls could wait though. He had to see him in person, to be sure. "I'm driving down to our exit from the highway. I'm going to wait for him there. F.R.I.D.A.Y. if you could make sure he doesn't just swing past me."

* * *

With his senses going crazy and his brain pounding in his skull, you would think Peter would have declined the chance to ride on top of a semi truck a few hundred miles north, but the activity was surprisingly immersive and calming. The wind rushing past deafened him, the smell of diesel overwhelmed any other scent trying to intrude. Peter could cling to the truck, close his eyes and let the vibrations lull him almost to sleep while Karen watched the road and made sure he exited at the right times.

She didn't warn him that this would be the last exit, that they wouldn't be finding a new truck and riding on. Karen directed him to a side road, to a man sitting carelessly on the hood of a parked car that probably cost more than the G.D.P. of Canada. With so many things in the world skewed, Peter wasn't completely shocked at the grey hair overpowering the black on Mr. Stark's head or the lines that shouldn't be nearly so deep on his face.

Peter expended the last of his momentum spinning around then perching near the top of a light post just above his destination. Karen's drone buzzed on past him straight to the older man.

Mr. Stark looked up at him, his expression strangely emotional, almost disbelieving. Peter was close enough to hear his heart and it was reassuring in its irregularity. The old shrapnel from Tony's time in an Afghani cave had long since been surgically removed, but his heart had scars and those scars made an almost musical arrhythmia out of his heart beat. With everything else he seemed to have forgotten, Peter remembered it perfectly, and it was better than a fingerprint as far as he was concerned. So despite Tony's changed appearance, Peter dropped down, mostly certain that this really was his mentor and the man he was trusting to help him. He pulled down his ragged, bandit-style mask and waved weakly.

"Peter? You okay, kid?" Tony asked.

"I'm okay, I think. Mostly okay." Absently he rubbed at the spinneret's opening on his right wrist. "Something happened to me, sir. I don't remember things I should know." Peter tried to keep his explanation calm, just facts. "I tried to go home but there was a little girl living in my bedroom. Did May and I move and I don't remember? Is May okay?"

"May's fine and all your stuff is actually in storage at the moment." Proving that he really was a father now, Tony rummaged in his pockets and came out with a clean tissue. He waved vaguely at his nose and offered the tissue to Peter. "You have something, right there."

Peter could feel his face heat up and he quickly pulled the plugs from his nose and ears. His time on the semi trucks had actually helped him get a bit better handle on his senses, enough that he felt less need for filters, especially not embarrassing filters that looked like bogies dripping down his face. "My senses were playing up at me. I plugged my ears and nose to damp it down some, you know, until I could find a quiet place to recalibrate my head."

"With Morgan, things dripping out of her nose are usually just snot." Tony pocketed his tissue awkwardly. "You and your senses are in luck, we are ten minutes from a safe, quiet place. Are you up to a ride inside a car? I promise not to play the music loud." Tony opened the passenger door and waited expectantly.

"Okay, Mr. Stark." Peter nodded.

For his part, Tony was pretty proud of himself for not reacting to the overt changes in Peter. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had indicated that there were biological inconsistencies, but resurrection by spider-god was bound to have its repercussions. Tony thought he was prepared for those differences, but a few extra arms would have been less jarring that the kid's eyes. Always expressive, Peter's warm brown eyes were now an alien yellow. He wasn't ready for Peter's movements, always somehow both graceful and awkward before, now inhumanly fluid. He most definitely wasn't ready for Peter's uncertain, almost detached voice explaining how he was mostly, sort of okay.

Tony took it all in without flinching or stepping back. He didn't let on how disconcerting this reunion was for him. The kid was scared, and whatever biological variables were at play, Peter deserved his best effort to help him through them.

Peter balked, staring into the pristine car. His bare feet were literally coated in a black layer of dirt and yellow spider guts were still flaking their way free of his arms. "I'm filthy. The trees here are tall enough. I could just swing it. Give me directions."

"Peter, I can afford to have the car cleaned. Climb in." It was painful to watch how miserable Peter looked sitting in the car seat. He hugged his knees awkwardly, seemingly trying to disappear into the upholstery. Tony hesitated, unsure how best to offer comfort. The hug they shared on the battlefield only a few months ago seemed like years ago, an impossible intimacy now. So Tony slapped on his poker face, slid into the driver's seat and started talking about nothing important. "Do you like the car? It's a special edition, only one like it in the world. F.R.I.D.A.Y. take us home. She's a better driver than I am. Besides, I have texting to do. Safety first, right?"

"Yes, sir," Peter agreed. "Are you going to tell me what happened now?"

His fingers flying over the keys on his phone, Tony shook his head. "If you aren't remembering what happened, then you're maybe not ready to remember it." At Peter's sharp look, Tony sighed and continued texting. "Kid I've been through it with the P.T.S.D. and the trauma counseling. I've seen all the shrinks and read all the books, and if you don't remember what happened to you, it may just be your brain protecting itself. So if your brain is still holding out on you after we get you clean and fed and eight hours of sleep, then I'll help fill in the blank spaces with what I know. Agreed?"

"Okay, I guess." Peter looked at him, those strange yellow eyes pleading. "But you do know what happened?"

"Not every detail, no, but enough." Tony smiled thinly at him still texting madly from his phone. In short order he had composed texts to Bruce and Dr. Cho, scheduling a check up for Peter tomorrow. He had messaged Pepper that the situation was delicate. He asked her to please take Morgan with her to their apartment in the city for the time being, just for a few days. Of course Pepper wanted details, and Tony struggled to find the right words for his sudden caution. He glanced at the kid, a frown wrinkling his brow. Peter was staring out the window at the scenery rolling by and Tony couldn't help seeing the vivid yellow pigment bordered in richly saturated black, that flowed up the back of his neck like a vibrantly-inked, abstract tattoo, or just the markings of an exotic spider.

Tony:_ Trust me, Pep. It's Peter, but I think an empty house would be best for now._

Pepper:_ Okay, fine, new plan, I'll nab Morgan from daycare and we'll drive into the city. I expect daily updates. _

Satisfied, Tony stuffed the phone in his breast pocket. "I bet it's a good story, how you got those fine clothes you're wearing. Is there a naked hip hop artist wandering the streets somewhere in Queens?"

Peter mustered a small smile and even quipped back. "Probably, but naked people aren't that uncommon, especially if it's a Friday night. Was it a Friday night?"

"Touché, kid, unfortunately it's a Tuesday," Tony said. "Seriously, tell me about it."

"Seriously? There was a mugger and my need was greater? We left him his boxers." At Tony's inquisitive stare, Peter elaborated. "I was totally naked under the Queensboro bridge, one of the many things I'm hoping you'll explain if I don't remember myself. While I was trying to figure out how I got there and what happened, a lady started screaming from really close by. She was being mugged, and clothes or not, it's not like I could let her get murdered, so I helped her out. She stole the mugger's clothes for me. I think she thought I was some kind of crazy street-person or drug addict or something. She told me where to find a homeless shelter. I don't know her name, but I think she's good people, you know? I'm glad I helped her."

"Sounds like good people to me." The joy he felt back home at the confirmation of Peter's resurrection had gone a bit murky and complicated when he realized how imperfect that resurrection might be at first sight, but he felt better hearing Peter's plaintive explanation that confused, alone and buck naked, he had thrown himself into a fight with a mugger, because really what else would he do? "You are good people yourself, kid."

Peter shrugged. "Anyone would have done the same thing."

The car rolled to a smooth gentle stop and both doors popped open, disrupting the moment. Peter didn't linger to give him a chance to argue with that self depreciating sentiment. "Sir, you live in a cabin in the woods."

"It's not a cabin. It's a lake house, and you haven't seen the garage or the basement. I settled down, but kept my toys for the most part." Tony climbed the porch stairs and motioned Peter to follow him. "I know you want to get cleaned up and changed into something, anything else. There's a full bath on the ground floor. While you get showered, I'm going to make some lunch."

"You cook?" Peter asked.

"Do I cook? I'm a husband and father, a family man. I'm going to make sandwiches, okay." Not really caring if the shockingly domestic living space that sported no less than six pastel, plush ponies on the kitchen bar, completely destroyed his billionaire, playboy reputation with Peter, Tony led the kid to their laundry. He systematically stacked clean, Tide-smelling towels and clothes into Peter's arms before marching him to the bathroom. "Just join me in the kitchen when you're done."

Tony didn't quite get a step away when Peter screamed. The clean laundry tumbled from his arms as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. "Peter, what's wrong?"

"My eyes," he whispered. "Mr. Stark, what's happening to me?"

It hadn't even occurred to him, that Peter hadn't yet seen himself clearly before now. The changes that had disconcerted Tony, had to be more horrifying when they were your own eyes and body transformed into strange, alien versions of what they should be. "Pete, your eyes, don't matter. It's a little cosmetic thing and if you don't like the color, you can get contacts. Right?"

"Are these cosmetic?" Peter thrust his right arm at Tony. He took his mentor's hand and made him feel the rigid, alien spinnerets in his arm. He folded his lip down, exposing two small wickedly sharp fangs floating above his regular incisors. "You have to tell me what this is, sir. Am I mutating?"

"You're not mutating, I don't think," Tony said. "You really don't remember any of it?"

"I don't. It's like my memories are jumbled. If my mind was a book, someone cut the binding and scattered the pages around. Everything is so hard. And I'm turning into a monster."

Tony hadn't been able to cross the distance between them and hug Peter when he first saw him at the highway, but Tony pulled him into a tight embrace now. "You listen to me, kid. However the packaging has changed you're still you. I wasn't sure at first, but a ten minute car ride was enough to convince me. The biological shit, we're going to figure out. You trust me?"

Peter didn't fight the hug. He just listened to Tony's unique heart rhythm, a comforting sound that he could practically feel beating through his chest. "Yes, sir. I trust you."

Tony only ended the embrace after several long seconds, and he felt some of the tension leave Peter's shoulders. "You get cleaned up. I'm going to assemble the sandwiches and we'll talk more about everything. You'll feel better with some food in you."

Once the bathroom door was closed, Peter sagged, leaning on the vanity's counter, feeling strangely calm despite everything. Mr. Stark hugged him. He didn't care about fangs or spinnerets or bizarre yellow eyes. Peter made himself smile, trying to see himself in the mirror, but his face just looked wrong. Mr. Stark could see him past the yellow-eyed oddness and that would have to be enough for now, until Peter could see for himself.

Getting clean was priority number one. Of course the shower was some strange architect's idea of a human car wash, with jets pointing to the center from multiple directions. There was literally an entire list of available shower programs. Peter just selected the highest temperature it would allow and the hardest stream. Standing under the jets, his calm expanded, deepened. His headache eased and Peter found it easier to remember some things. Of course the Avengers didn't use the tower anymore. Mr Stark sold it ages ago. Of course Mr. Stark was older. Peter was snapped and had lost five years with half the world.

Shame filled him when he thought about being snapped, dying in Mr. Stark's arms on Titan. It was so cruel, begging and panicking when there was nothing to be done. He should have been stronger, more heroic. Uncle Ben hadn't begged Peter. He'd just told Peter how much he loved him.

"I almost died again," Peter whispered. He flexed his right arm, that most definitely wasn't his. The doctors took his arm and leg. The last thing he remembered in the hospital, it had felt like Thanos himself was sitting on his chest. He couldn't draw a breath. Then there was nothing until he woke under the Queensboro bridge, so hungry that he ate a metric ton of spiders.

They bent time to save everyone after Thanos snapped them away. What had they done to save Peter? He was on the edge, barely alive. They had to have done some freaky experimental treatment to save him. Mr. Stark had come to the hospital personally to help save him. Whatever Peter was now, it had to have been Mr. Stark's doing, right? Who else in his life had the resources and the motivation to mad-scientist him back from the brink of death?

It was sort of funny. Mr. Stark had done exactly what Peter had pleaded for on Titan. He saved him from certain death, twice. Peter didn't feel relieved to have a theory for his situation and he didn't feel grateful. He couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that he was wrong down to his bones, that his skin literally didn't fit him.

Peter emerged from the bathroom to the sounds of dishes and silverware clinking and clattering. The food looked surprisingly good—ham and cheese sandwich with a pile of fruit and healthy potato chip knockoffs called veggie crisps. It looked like something May would put together when she wasn't trying to poison them with baking. He wasn't terribly hungry, but based on his behaviors this morning, terribly hungry was not a good look on him anymore. Peter took a seat, moving completely silently without thinking about it. Tony jumped, almost spilling the pitcher of juice that he was carrying from the fridge. "Jesus Christ, try to make some noise, kid. My heart can only take so much."

"Sorry," Peter said. "I'm feeling better, clearer. I think my timelines are closer to straight. You sold Avengers Tower ages ago, so I feel a little silly for swinging all the way up there looking for help. Um, May and I, lost our apartment to the blip. We didn't actually move."

"I think you can give yourself a break for being a little confused, but the facts sound accurate," Tony agreed. "You remember everything?"

"I remember Titan and the battle on Earth and the hospital after." Peter set his right arm on the table wrist up and stared down at it like it was a specimen. "They amputated my right arm first thing."

"They did." On one level Tony wanted Peter to tell him about his time with the Weaver, to lay it all out so he could understand better than Strange or Wanda had been willing or able to describe. On the other, he hoped the kid just lost the time, forgot it forever. If it was as terrible there as the witchy ones had alluded, Peter was probably better off with a blank spot in his mind. "Do you remember what happened after?"

"The last thing I remember in the hospital was them explaining that I had to be intubated. I was having such a hard time breathing. Then I woke up under that bridge. Can you fill in the blank space?" Peter asked.

Tony set the juice on the table and sighed. "Not with any detail. I have the broad strokes."

"Don't lie to me," Peter said, his tone retaining the same detached calm from earlier. "I'm not angry, but I need to know what this is. I need to know what you did to me, Mr. Stark."

"You think I did this? You think I saved your life." Tony scrubbed a hand over his unshaven stubble. "Fair assumption, I would have done just about anything in service of that at the time, but I didn't save you, Peter. I got to the hospital, just in time to be on hand when you died."

"I'm not dead, though," Peter snapped back. "You obviously figured something out."

"No, you died. Your body was on a slab for autopsy with cremation planned for afterwards when everything went decidedly supernatural." Tony shrugged. "You want me to tell you what happened in that gap, well I only know what Strange told me. He said that you were entangled with a spider-deity. He actually accused you of being a 'pagan spider-deity worshiper' at first. He backed off that assumption eventually. For the record, have you ever belonged to an organized religion? Worshiped a pagan god?"

"No?" Peter felt his small swell of anger slip in the face of such an unexpected explanation. "I mean, May and Ben went to church at Christmas sometimes, and I went with them. How would I get entangled with a spider-god?"

"See, that's what I said, but you were there with the spider-god, out of reach and unavailable for comment. Strange and Wanda tried to help, but it didn't go well. They were able to talk to you and give you information that they thought you might be able to use to get yourself free, but we've all been here twiddling our thumbs for weeks, waiting." Tony settled back and tried his sandwich. "I've had a couple thousand drones looking for you, because as negative and hopeless as Strange painted it, I knew better than to bet against you, Peter. And here you are, alive and free, a bit more spidery, but you were already a little spidery, right?"

"A bit more spidery? Setting aside how insane that all sounds, this isn't actually my body is it?" Peter asked. Peter stared down at his alien right arm, with its spinneret. But it wasn't just his arm. There wasn't a single cell in this body that belonged to the real Peter Parker. "Maybe it's just spidery additions to you, but I don't feel like me. When I woke up under that bridge, I wasn't Peter. I was hungry and not much else. There were dozens of spiders there. Mr. Stark, I ate all of them and I enjoyed it, every bite. Later, I remembered being Peter when I was done being hungry. I've not felt right or settled in all the time since then. It feels like that hungry, mindless thing owns this body." Peter rapped on his chest, over his heart. "I don't think Peter Parker fits in this skin."

Tony tried not to let on exactly how hard it was to hear Peter's disaffection, his alienation from the second chance at life the new body represented. "Kid, I don't pretend to understand what you're feeling, but breathe for a second. I've got Bruce and Dr. Cho coming tomorrow. If there is anyone who might have an inkling what it's like to feel out of place in their body, it's Bruce. They're going to check you out and help you through this. You're going to be okay."

"You don't know that." Peter pushed his empty plate away. "Does May know that I'm alive?"

"No, not yet. I need to call her." Tony knew what was coming before Peter could say it.

"I don't want to be a monster. I don't want to hurt anyone, especially May. So don't tell her, not until we're absolutely sure that I'm going to be okay," Peter pleaded. "Promise me?"

"You don't seem to realize the miracle this is. You sitting here having the world's strangest existential crisis, is a miracle. You're going to be okay. I promise you that," Tony said fiercely. "But I won't call your aunt until you're good and ready. She'll murder me of course. I can accept that."

"You can blame me. She won't kill me," Peter said, "Is there somewhere I could maybe sleep? I know it's early but I'm really tired."

"Of course, there's a guest room ready for you. Also, before you go, I know I promised a tablet, but for now this will have to do." He pulled a sleek Stark phone out of his pocket and handed it over. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. loaded your old contacts, photos, and whatnot already. I don't want you to feel cut off. If you get ready to call May, call her."

Peter stared at the phone, then dropped it in his pocket without even trying to unlock it. "Thanks."

* * *

Peter didn't balk for a single test the next day. Banner and Cho worked him over, radiographing and ultrasounding. They drew nearly a liter of blood. Peter didn't object to the biopsies and aspirates and scrapings. He showed them his newly developed spinnerets and demonstrated his biologically generated webs. After a bit of careful manipulation, Banner was even able to draw a small sample of Peter's venom out.

For his part Tony stayed back and listened, letting the others do the actual hands on work. He spoke up only once to make sure Peter was really comfortable having the distinctive black and yellow markings that extended from the crown of his head all the way to his ankles, photographed. "It's fine. It's not frontal nudity and it's for science. Right?"

When it was time to analyze what they'd collected, Tony convinced Peter to retreat with him upstairs. "Imagine you're pretty tried. Do you want to just hide out in the guest room for a while? I'm going to start dinner. There aren't a lot of meals in my repertoire. Is tomato soup with grilled cheese acceptable? Pepper has a strict no junk food rule in her kitchen, but I have a stash of soda. We could raid that too."

"I could help. You don't have to make meals for me, Mr. Stark. Surely you have other things to do. I mean, your daughter and Ms. Stark probably miss you. You don't have to hold my hand. I'm not your responsibility."

"You're welcome to help, but I'm cooking." Tony calmly assembled ingredients on the kitchen island. He pushed a paring knife and bag of potatoes at Peter. "Peel. Dice. Rinse," he ordered succinctly. Setting a stock pot on to boil, Tony started peeling onions. "For the record, I talk to Morgan and Pepper every day. They aren't in China. They're a few hours down the road, giving us space to figure things out. And you, Peter, are family, not some obligation I can't shake. Maybe you don't remember when that happened. Hell, I'm not completely sure either, but you are. There is nothing more important for me right now, than making some soup and yes, holding your hand until you stop feeling like something other than yourself."

They worked silently for several minutes, Peter efficiently powering through each task Tony gave him until they had a savory-smelling pot of soup simmering slow and low. When there was nothing to do but wait, Tony snagged two cans of Coke from behind some lettuce and slid one across to Peter.

"Thank you," Peter said, "for everything."

Cho didn't stay for dinner. She seemed a bit more uncomfortable around Peter than the average enhanced person. Tony took note of her demeanor and knew he would do his best to keep her out of any further medical help Peter needed. If spiders creeped her out that much, she might need a more mundane job. Tony served up dinner to Bruce and Peter while Bruce regaled them with preliminary results.

"The DNA alone is so unusual. I mean we have your original genome from before, human DNA that had been augmented. Your current DNA did not start human, it was augmented to achieve a human approximation. Do you feel any different?" Bruce asked.

Peter stopped stirring his soup and glanced pointedly at Tony. "Different? I feel like an alien, like my skin doesn't fit me right."

Bruce sighed, his enthusiasm shifting quickly to worry. "Hey, not surprising. I've been there myself. It's not a good feeling, but it gets better. You settle in eventually, you know?"

The giant green man smiled, and Peter wanted to believe they were the same, that he would wake up one day and feel normal again. "I just need to give it time, right?"

"Time, years of self reflection and meditation, some therapy, a couple of mental break downs, that's what worked for me," Bruce half-joked. "On the positive side, we found no evidence of ongoing mutation. You are what you are. Oh, and I started work on your venom, very interesting stuff."

Letting Bruce and Tony carry the conversation, discussing his unique biology and current events and what remained of the Avengers. Peter ate his tomato soup and he felt as comfortable as he had since waking in his new body. When the food was gone and the conversation shifted outside to the porch, Peter excused himself to the guest room.

He had tried to sleep last night, had tossed and turned. He recited the periodic table, then shifted to listing pi. Finally, he had just given up, half-believing that his new brain couldn't turn off and sleep might never be possible again. Peter had browsed the web, checking on friends that he didn't dare reach out to. He read Spider-Man and Black Widow memorials.

Peter discovered that his identity was known and the response to his obvious youth and his sacrifice was overwhelming. Everyone was so grateful even as others were horrified that a kid who couldn't legally vote or drive a car had been called on to fight at all. Mr. Stark had kept May safe through it all, not letting the media near her.

Peter wasn't tempted to pull his phone out tonight. Impossibly tired, he felt different, like sleep might be possible. He climbed under the covers and was unconscious before his head had settled on the pillow.

* * *

Sleep wasn't something that Bruce needed to do very often. Hulk's stamina went on literally, indefinitely. He slept every few days as more of a mental exercise than anything, so while Peter and eventually Tony went off to rest, he returned to the basement lab and the stimulating puzzle of Peter's biology.

Well past midnight the lab door opened, and a silent, pajama-clad figure entered, an indistinct silhouette in his peripheral vision. Bruce finished scanning the slide on his microscope before looking his visitor's way. "You're up pretty early, Peter." Bruce waved him over, but Peter stayed back in the doorway. He then realized the kid was shaking, his strange yellow eyes dilated all the way open. "Are you okay?"

"Um, I had a nightmare. Are there clippers here? You know hair clippers?" Peter asked.

Frowning quizzically, Bruce gestured toward the far wall, and the examination table. "I'm pretty sure there's a pair. We may only have a forty blade. It's a lab, not a salon. Why?"

Peter didn't answer. He crossed the lab purposefully and went through each drawer until he found a shinny silver pair of clippers. The kid obviously didn't need a shave. It would be hard to actually do yourself harm with clippers, but Bruce moved to block Peter's exit anyway. "Humor me, what are you going to shave."

"My head," Peter replied as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. The central air kicked on. A gentle breeze rustled his hair and the loose pajama top. Peter jerked as though something had attacked him and he literally ripped off the shirt. His chest heaved and jerked with rapid panicked breaths. "Spiders. They can hide in clothes and long hair." He turned on the battery powered clippers and imprecisely began shaving off his hair, leaving an uneven ragged mess.

"Okay, you've made a choice with the hair. Let me help even it up, huh? There aren't any spiders here. You said you had a dream. Were there dream spiders?" Bruce would have declaimed the spiders' existence with more certainty if there hadn't been so many spooky disappearing and appearing spiders around Peter's dead body rather recently. "Can I help?"

Peter stared at him, with wild panicked eyes and the wall of terror-fueled adrenaline that seemed to be driving him, faded enough to hear Bruce's calm reassurances. "Okay. Okay." He handed over the clippers and perched at the edge of a lab stool. "I must seem crazy."

"You had a bad dream and you're already dealing with an entirely new body, that's a new autonomous nervous system, you know? You may find yourself over or under reacting to all kinds of things because of rejiggered hormones. Give yourself some time to figure it out." Once he was sure Peter expected his touch, Bruce evened his hair cut with long slow passes of the clippers. "You're lucky that this is a ten blade, not a forty."

"What's the difference?" Peter asked. "It's not like I can go out in public anyway. If I could still pass for Peter Parker, everyone thinks he's dead, and I'm not sure I'd pass for human, so who cares? I want a hairdo that spiders can't hide in."

"Well, I think you'd have looked a little silly with a shiny, Mr. Clean-style bald head." Bruce grinned. "Now, how about we find you some clothes that fit a bit better? Dr. Cho wears petite scrubs and she left a pair here. I think they might do the trick."

Wearing a set of seal blue scrubs that fit him snugly enough spiders would not have any folds to hide in, Peter visibly calmed further. He rubbed his hands back and forth over his stubbly short hair and just took long slow breaths. "I'm not crazy."

"Nope," Bruce agreed. "It might behoove you to get some counseling. Trauma can manifest in ugly ways. The Hulk never would have been a problem if it weren't for my neuroses, undealt with traumas. When you're enhanced, like we are, it's part of protecting the people around us, dealing with our traumas in as healthy a way as we can. If we go crazy, lose ourselves to the damage, it can be a terrible thing."

"I don't want to be a monster," Peter said with a tinge of desperation.

"That's a big part of not becoming one. You have people here to support and help you. You're not in it alone." Bruce patted the younger man on his shoulder. "Do you think you could sleep? It's only two in the morning."

"Maybe. I think I should try. Thanks for the haircut and the scrubs."

* * *

Oblivious to the small drama that unfolded the night before, Tony woke mid morning to a silent house. He knew that F.R.I.D.A.Y. would have told him if Peter tried to leave the house, but he still headed downstairs to visually confirm that his houseguest was where he should be. He knocked softly and cracked the door open just wide enough that he could see the bed, the empty bed. Tony pushed the door open wider and stepped inside. A network of fine spider silk stretched and broke at his touch. "Peter?" Wedged into the far corner, where the ceiling met the walls, a pair of bright yellow eyes peered down at him.

Sinuous and inhuman, Peter unfolded and flipped down, landing lightly and silently. Immediately appearing more human when he was standing with his feet on the floor, Peter rubbed a hand over his newly shaved head. "Good morning, Mr. Stark. This is not as weird as it looks. Well, it's really weird, I know, but in the grand scheme of weird things, it's par for the course, really."

Instead of firing off the three dozen questions that popped into his head, Tony limited himself to one. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm better. Had a rough patch last night, but Dr. Banner helped me calm down." Peter looked like he was waiting for Tony to freak out or scream in disgust. "You're not going to ask about the hair or me sleeping on the ceiling?"

"I'm going to start breakfast. You can tell me about it in the kitchen. How do you like your eggs?" Tony asked, using food to buffer the awkwardness. He freaked out less with a project to distract him.

"Scrambled, I guess." Peter sat at the kitchen island and watched Mr. Stark crack eggs. He gave each egg one hard tap and split it open, the same motion each time, efficient. "You really embraced the cooking thing, huh?"

Tony shrugged. "I retired from Ironman and Stark Industries. Pepper still works, so I learned the basics and she handles anything not basic that comes up. Stop stalling, kid. Haircut? Ceiling?"

"Right, the weird." Peter sighed softly. "I had a nightmare. There were spiders all around me and on me. I couldn't move to get away or brush them away. They were absolutely silent, and most of them I couldn't see, but I could feel them, a whisper of a tickle over my skin rustling through my hair. It was terrible."

"Doesn't sound pleasant, but you woke up. You knew it was a dream. How did that end up on the ceiling?" Tony asked.

"Well, sleeping has not been easy for me and I knew I'd never be able to sleep again if I didn't do something about my hair. Dr. Banner helped and he loaned me these scrubs, less space in them for spiders than the pajamas. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it helped. He said I was dealing with a new autonomic nervous system, and I'd probably have similar overreactions until I got used to it."

A plate of fluffy eggs and a glass of juice appeared in front of Peter. Tony settled on the bench next to him with a gray smoothie and a half of a grapefruit. "Non-enhanced fifty-year olds limit their egg breakfasts to one a week," Tony explained. "Now, I understand the haircut, but you still have to get me to the ceiling bit."

"Right, the ceiling, it's the least cluttered space in the guest room. No furniture, no curtains, that ceiling corner is the most defensible against spider attack, and it worked. I got back to sleep." Peter tried his eggs and smiled. "These are really good."

"Of course they're good, I made them," Tony said. He bit back the urge to ask why Peter hadn't come to him when he was panicking and making drastic decisions, like shearing his hair or suspending himself from the ceiling to sleep. Peter found a nearby, trustworthy and conscious adult to help him deal with the situation. Tony couldn't exactly fault his decisions. "I walked through a spiderweb when I came into your room this morning. It might not have just been a dream about spiders. You may have had a visitor last night and with you not remembering how you got clear of the spider-god, I think we should get Dr. Strange out here for a mystical check up, sooner rather than later."

"If I got kidnapped and then resurrected by a spider-god, shouldn't I have had the metaphysical exam before the medical exam? I mean, priorities, right?" Peter used his fork to move his eggs around rather than eat them. Coming to a decision, he added the next bit in a rapid fire, embarrassed rush. "Also, I made the web in the bedroom. You see, spiders are non-verbal but they communicate with their webs, signaling simple things like, hunt somewhere else, this is my turf, so I laid out a basic but large web that I thought would indicate pretty clearly that the room was occupied and no spiders should enter. It was part of the dance I did to make the room feel safe. I know it was a strange thing to do. I just really wanted to sleep, and it made me feel safer. I'm sorry. I won't do it again, any of it. It was weird. I know it was all weird."

"Kid, don't apologize to me until you do something wrong, like wreck my car or sink another ferry. It's going to be a process, adjusting to the new biology. If you need to sleep on the ceiling to feel safe, then that's okay. We don't sweat the small stuff here." Tony gestured to Peter's breakfast. "Although, if you don't eat that and stop playing with it, you're going to hurt my feelings."

Their breakfast continued in mostly silence. With no prompting, Peter started running dish water and cleaning up. Tony tapped out a quick text message to Wong. There were only a handful of dishes, and Peter was finished in short order. "Do you want to come downstairs and remind Dr. Banner that the sun's up?"

"If it would be okay, I'd like to go outside for a little bit. Just get some air, you know?" Peter asked hesitantly. "Tell Dr. Banner good morning for me."

Tony looked conflicted about letting Peter back out of his sight, but he nodded. "Sure, no problem. F.R.I.D.A.Y. maintains a security perimeter around the house for five hundred feet. Just stay inside that. I'm still a paranoid bastard at my core, so humor me?" Tony asked.

"Got it," Peter agreed. Standing on the porch with nothing but idyllic lakefront woods to see, Peter stepped barefoot into the grass. It felt good between his toes, soft and damp and just alive. It wasn't like he'd never been to a park but living in Queens there were rules. As May put it, you wore shoes outside your apartment, period, unless you wanted to die of tetanus. Peter hadn't had a pair of shoes since waking up in the world again, and honestly, he hadn't even thought to ask for some. This wasn't the kind of place where you got tetanus from being barefoot anyway.

He contemplated the path leading to a small, pink-accented playhouse, but five hundred feet wasn't far enough to really stretch his legs. Instead, Peter picked a tall pine tree and started climbing. He found a comfortable spot from which he could see a good distance and settled in, sticking himself to the branch and trunk so he didn't have to think about holding on. It was quiet here, peaceful. In the distance he could just hear the interstate if he tried, but it was easy to tune that out. This place was alive with delicate noise, birds fluttering and chirping. Some squirrels nearby were barking at one another, domestic dispute Peter decided arbitrarily. The insects were a loud and varied group. The beetles clicked away at a tree stump. And so many ways to buzz—flies and mosquitos and wasps blended a dozen different variations of insect flight into a noise to rival rush hour traffic in its own way.

Conspicuous in their absence, Peter didn't hear any spiders. He focused on tuning the minutia out and tried not to think about the arachnids and their silent passage through the woods. No Peter focused on the wind and the gentle swaying of his chosen tree.

It was nice, but he wasn't in any danger of falling asleep.

Just inside, Bruce was halfway through his mixing bowl of oatmeal when the wizards arrived. Wanda and Strange stepped into the living room through one of his sparkly portals, but Wanda seemed to be driving. "Hey guys, I can make some more oatmeal if anyone is hungry," Bruce offered.

"You know, this is my house. You might try the portal outside and then knock on the door, just basic courtesy," Tony complained.

"You're worried about courtesy. Why don't we talk professional courtesy. I should have been notified the moment you found Peter back in the world. Is there a reason you waited two days?" Strange asked.

"Shouldn't you have sensed a disturbance in the force or something?" Tony asked. "Since when is it my job to let you now about supernatural comings and goings?"

"Where's Peter?" Wanda asked, cutting through the men's bickering with her excited question. "How did he get clear? What argument did the Weaver accept to let him go?"

"Pete's outside getting a breath of fresh air. I don't know how he got clear. He doesn't remember, not any of it. I'm not a shrink, but I don't think we should be reminding him either," Tony said. "Before I call him in, he's got some biological anomalies we're still figuring out. To put it simply, he's more spidery, just so no one is shocked."

Strange and Wanda exchanged a meaningful look. "I'll be able to tell, fast and easy," Wanda said. "Trust me."

"Excuse me, what will you be able to tell?" Tony asked.

"Stephen thinks there's a reasonably good chance that the Weaver just made a false copy of Peter and sent it here to make sure we left them in peace, no more interference," Wanda said. "I'll be able to tell if it's really him. I can look in his mind; I've been in there before."

Tony crossed his arms and didn't respond for a long moment. Peter had asked him why he'd had the medical check up before the spiritual one and this was why. At every stage of this whole nightmare, Strange had taken a bad situation and declared it worse than anyone thought. Of course, he didn't believe Peter was really back. Tony wasn't surprised. "You're wrong. That's Peter. I'd stake my life on it."

Stephen looked around, his eyebrows raising. "Really? I notice that you didn't stake your wife or daughter's life on it."

"You guys have got to be kidding." Bruce set his oatmeal aside and came to stand next to Tony to show solidarity and hopefully keep his friend from physically attacking Strange.

"Just stop." Wanda's voice resonated and the men turned to her. "You can stay here; I'll settle the argument." Outside, she needed no directions to find her quarry, spotting him quickly more than a hundred feet in the air. She waited a moment for Peter to feel her mind knocking at the door. He looked down and didn't fight her mental intrusion. She held the memory of the mind and soul she met in the hospital not so very long ago and compared it to the one in front of her.

Peter welcomed the exam, his own doubts about his humanity rushing forward. Wanda's mind and power enveloped him in the warmest, most reassuring wave, quickly adamant that he really was Peter Parker on the inside and in every way that mattered. She drew back from him mentally but gestured for him to come down for a proper greeting.

With a graceful leap that any jumping spider would be proud of, Peter ping ponged between two trees to quickly descend. Wanda didn't wait for him to make it back to the porch, striding out to meet him halfway across the lawn. Her smile remained eager and affectionate, his yellow eyes apparently giving her no pause at all. She said something in Serbian that sounded remarkably fond and with no hesitation at all she hugged him. "Welcome home, Pietro."

"Thank you," Peter whispered. "I needed that."

"I think that she's subtly signaling to us that he's really Peter," Tony explained to Bruce, sarcasm dripping from each word. "What do you think, Stephen?"

"I'm glad it's him. No one deserves what he was suffering with the Weaver, but you have to know that this doesn't mean he's free and clear. Peter doesn't remember why she let him go. Who knows what might trigger him going back? This isn't a simple happy ending. We need to perform a complete diagnostic series, determine how significant his connection to the Weaver is now and what effects it could have on him." Strange gestured like he was going to generate a portal. "This would all be simpler at the sanctum."

"Well, we're not here to make your job easier. You can do what you need to do here," Tony ordered. "Or better yet, you could delegate the whole thing to Maximoff and scamper back to your sanctum."

"Wanda is skilled and powerful, but she doesn't have the experience or the knowledge base for what we need in this situation."

Wanda only released her hug with Peter to then grab his hand as though something might snatch him away if she let go. "They bicker a lot, Strange and Stark. They're too much alike I think."

Peter nodded agreement, blissful in the wake of the grounded, human feeling Wanda had left him with. He didn't quite feel himself, but it was so close as to be heavenly. "I need to see May," Peter whispered. "She thinks I'm dead."

"Okay, do you know where she is?" Wanda asked. She showed Peter her sling ring. "It might be the greatest toy sorcerers ever invented. Give me directions and we'll go."

Tony and Stephen had lost no steam, snarking back and forth at one another, so Bruce was the one who noticed the portal Wanda opened and called out to them. "Guys?"

"We'll be back soon. Peter has someone to visit." Wanda waved as she slipped through the already closing portal.

"Did Maximoff just kidnap Peter?" Tony asked.

"She said she'd bring him back," Bruce replied. "I'm going to finish breakfast."

Tony stood on his porch with Strange, staring at the spot the kids had disappeared into. Tony was the one to break the silence. "You're right that I should have called you when Peter first appeared. I just needed to enjoy the win for a minute before you tore it all apart again. You know?"

"I was a neurosurgeon, not a psychiatrist, but I get it." Stephen crossed his arms over his chest. "You have to know that the Weaver is old and powerful and smart. If she returned Peter, it's going to be in service to her own best interests and plans. I haven't done anything but glance at him with mage-sight and I can tell you his destiny is still bound tightly to the Weaver. I'm not trying to take away the win from you or Peter. It's about preserving the win."

"I appreciate that." Tony opened the front door and nodded for Stephen to come on in. "The kids will be back soon, probably. So, eggs, coffee, eye of newt?"

* * *

May had been on one interview after another since resolving to find work and get back to her life, but even with her nursing skills a job hadn't yet materialized. There were just so many people suddenly back in the work force. The job market hadn't had time to equilibrate. After another fruitless day, she came home to Happy's apartment, to find two people sitting in front of the door.

Wanda, she recognized immediately, but the kid leaning against her, made May's heart ache. His hair was too blond and his skin the wrong shade of pale, but the build was right so that he could almost pass for Peter. May opened her mouth to greet her guests when the boy looked up, and her world went just a little tilted.

The curve of his cheek, the cut of his chin, that was Peter. Human eyes didn't come in such vivid shades of yellow though, not to mention that she watched her nephew die, one inch at a time in the hospital. She literally watched the doctor pump his dead heart for half an hour in graphic, ugly detail. "Peter? This is not possible. What is this?"

"Surprise?" His voice tremulous, Peter stood and explained, "It's a really long story. Wanda knows it better than I do, actually. It is me, May. I swear it is. Please don't be scared. I know I don't look right. My eyes are the worst, I know."

She reached out and cupped his cheek, almost scared that he wouldn't really be there. Then she was hugging him so tight. May stepped back and starred down into his transformed eyes, not with fear but a tinge of anxiety. "I think I need to hear the whole story now. Let go in and get a cup of tea."

May dropped her keys three times, her hands were trembling so hard before Wanda took them from her and opened the door. Rejecting all attempts to help, May managed to serve three piping hot cups of soothing chamomile tea. "Okay, how are you alive, baby?"

"It turns out that being agnostic in the wrong place at the wrong time can get you accidentally deputized as an acolyte of a pagan spider deity," Peter explained, though May didn't even smile at his choice of words. "The Weaver of Webs gave me my Spider-Man powers, and she is responsible for this resurrection."

"That's the short version," Wanda agreed.

"Okay, a pagan spider-god resurrected you? That sounds insane, but you're sitting in front of me, so I'm going to accept it for now." May took a long steadying drink of her tea. "Can I please have the long version?"

Peter looked at Wanda and she squeezed his hand that she seemed unwilling to let go of for more than a moment at a time. "I've been studying this with the Sorcerer Supreme. These pagan gods are actually ancient beings known as celestials. Their power is only limited by the roles and rules they chain themselves with. The Weaver of Webs clung to spiders as the mold of her true face and form. She set herself as the protector of the spiders and guardian against the locusts of the realms. She's not the worst of her kind, but she isn't constrained by anything resembling human morals or ideals and while she is worshipped in some realities and other worlds, her religion never truly flourished here."

"We aren't sure why she forced an association with Peter in the beginning, but she took possession of his soul and an imprint of his mind when he died, and she built a new body for him in her realm, a gift. She wanted him to stay there with her, to evolve into one of her children, but apparently, Peter talked her into letting him come home." Wanda finished, skipping over the ugliest parts of the story. "Don't mistake me. The Weaver is not a benevolent entity and she likely isn't done with Peter yet, but he is alive."

"It's a miracle," May said. "I don't care if it's a messy miracle with a dozen strings attached. I'll take it."

**Author's Note:**

I lied again. There will be a tiny little epilogue to tie up a couple of loose ends and leave things less open ended. The original plan was to just tag it to the end of this chapter but it got so darn long again.


	5. Epilogue

**Note: **Sorry this is so late. I've been distracted. It leaves a lot of the story only vaguely resolved, but I never planned for this story to go much past this point. The ending plan changed part way through and the story deserves a rewrite and critical edit to make the through line better, but I've not got any real plans to do so. Hope ya'll enjoyed it a bit anyway. Thanks for reading.

**Epilogue**

Ned's phone blew up with the news before he saw it for himself.

Someone had tagged Midtown School for Science and Technology, possibly more than one someone. The sheer scale of the graffiti was awe inspiring. The Avengers, Hulk and Ironman, Black Widow and most prominently Spider-man stretched from the ground to the roof. Everyone knew who Spider-man was now. They knew this was his school, emphasis on past tense.

Would Peter have been pleased with the tribute?

Ned stared at the artwork and couldn't make himself walk through the doors. Being snapped to dust for five years and coming back to a world so changed hadn't been easy. Losing his best friend was just another small crisis amidst everyone else's trauma. It wasn't that no one cared. Spider-man saved them, and in a way grieving for him belonged to everyone.

Now that there weren't any more secrets, the world wanted a piece of Spider-man and in his absence they were willing to settle for a piece of the people he had touched. Ned was tired of the questions, the reporters, the sympathy.

Not for the first time, Ned was saved from the moment by an unlikely interloper on his grief. A set of car keys jingled in his face. "They're making us start the year over in a few months anyway. Let's ditch."

Ned stared hard at his classmate, his bully, and more recently his friend. "Flash, I don't ditch." The larger than life mural loomed over him and he shrugged. "But okay."

It started with the reporters before school, always hanging around asking questions from anyone who would give them the time of day. Ned mostly avoided notice until they learned that he and Peter had been close and then they pursued him. The first time Flash interceded and let him make it through the doors to school, Ned had thought he just wanted to talk to the reporters himself, get a little face time with the media. Then he started noticing other little things, that mostly boiled down to Flash interposing space when Ned was feeling crowded.

It was almost like having an obnoxious, loud-mouthed guardian angel. Today, Ned let Flash drive them away from school, safely ensconced in the luxury leather of the Audi Peter had crashed a few months and five years ago. "You can't tell at all that it was wrecked," Ned said when they were halfway to Queens. "Sorry, I guess you got in some trouble for that."

"Not really, it was insured. My dad, he didn't care. Honestly, he barely noticed." Flash shifted gears, driving a bit faster than was perhaps safe. "Why did Spider-man need a car? Do you know?"

Ned shrugged. Spider-man had never publicly been linked to the plane crash on Coney Island or the Vulture's arrest. Though it was pretty pointless trying to keep a low profile now. "He had a plane to catch. He actually crashed the plane too. It was being hijacked."

"I remember that. He took down Liz's dad?" Flash frowned and sighed. "Sorry, I wasn't trying to make you tell Spider-man stories."

"Yeah, I sort of brought it up, so don't apologize." For the first time since everyone started asking him about Peter and Spider-man, Ned felt like talking. "Peter died and everyone thinks he was this perfect hero. He wasn't. He was scared and he made stupid mistakes sometimes. I'm so mad at him for dying."

"That's a little messed up. Maybe don't tell the reporters that. But I get it. I'm not the most rational when it comes to anger. If you hadn't noticed, I hated Peter Parker."

"Yeah, he hated you too," Ned agreed.

Flash pulled to a stop in front of Ned's apartment building. "Get out Leeds. I have places to be."

Ned didn't thank Flash for the ride. Their strange excuse for friendship did not include thank you any more often than it included discussions of Peter and his alter-ego. Knowing the school would text his mom about his absence, Ned pulled out his phone for some quick damage control. His mom didn't seem skeptical of his claim of sudden illness. After assuring her that he would be fine at home alone, Ned put his phone away so photos of the graffitied school building would stop popping up on his notifications.

Ignoring every distraction in his room, Ned kicked off his shoes, burrowed under the covers and went back to sleep. Hours later when he could hear his mom in the kitchen, Ned peeked out at the world. At first he didn't notice the change in his room, but there was a new Lego set staring at him.

It was the Queensborough bridge with a Spider-man figure swinging along. May had texted him about the set. She had authorized it to help raise money for the displaced and she thought Peter would have loved it. Not for the first time since the blip, Ned was overwhelmed with emotions. He was angry and sad and he just wanted his friend back, not some stupid Lego set.

He scooped the box up, and dropped it in his wastebasket before escaping to the kitchen. Half-turning from the stove, his mother hugged him close and felt his forehead and neck.

"You don't feel warm. I saw you were asleep and tried to let you rest. Sorry if I was too loud. Are you feeling better?" Ms. Leeds spoke gently without stopping her meal prep, dicing onions and peppers. "Did you see the Lego set May dropped off? I thought it looked very nice. I still can't believe Peter was Spider-man. Our little Peter with his inhaler?"

"I'm going to take a shower, Mom. I do feel better," Ned interjected.

"All right then, I'm glad you're feeling better." He could see from her expression that she was struggling to connect with him to get him to talk to her, but Ned couldn't make himself reminisce about Peter.

Sitting through dinner, his mom and dad let him get by with the occasional nod or one word answer to their questions. They didn't push him and Ned was relieved to get away again. He climbed back in bed, determined to sleep a little more.

A quiet knock at his window, startled him to full wakefulness with its impossible familiarity. He lived on the fifth floor. The only person who ever came knocking at his window couldn't be out there now. Ned tossed off his covers and padded quickly to confront his visitor.

A figure, so similar to Peter that it could almost be him was sitting on the windowsill, no he was clinging, practically perched. Ned could believe he was dreaming, but why would he dream of Peter with buzzed off blond-ish hair? Why would his subconscious add a pair of tinted glasses more like something Tony Stark would wear than Peter?

The almost-Peter waved at him and pointed to the window latch.

Ned considered ignoring the strange hallucination and crawling back under the covers, but he opened his window and let the figure in. "You're not Peter. Peter died."

"You're not wrong, but to be fair, we both died five years ago. Coming back from the dead is totally a thing these days." Peter shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting nervously for Ned to digest his appearance, to draw his own conclusions. "I'm alive. It's me, really."

"Really?" Ned asked skeptically. Peter initiated their secret handshake, going through the intricate pattern without hesitation. Rather than ask for more evidence, Ned just embraced this hopeful reality. "Oh my God, Peter, you're alive. Everyone knows who you are now. Are you coming back to school? School has been crazy. They had to get a court order to make the press back off school grounds and stop harassing everyone. Someone graffitied the entire building with the Avengers and Spider-man. And Flash, you wouldn't believe it but he's been sort of decent. I can't even, man, you're really alive? You have to tell me what happened."

Peter sighed and seemed to shrink a bit. "All the adults in my life seem to think it's best that Peter Parker stays dead. I'm sure you've noticed that I'm not the same, biologically." Nervously, he took off the tinted glasses and let Ned see his new eyes in all their yellow glory. "Me and May are being relocated west for at least a couple of years while things die down. No one says it, but they want to make sure I'm not dangerous in my new biological normal."

"Dangerous?" Ned asked.

"It's a long story, and I'm not completely sure they're wrong to be careful or I'd be arguing more," Peter admitted.

"The eyes are a little creepy, but we all have our aesthetic flaws. I can't imagine you being dangerous." Ned stepped forward, hugging Peter tight.

"I'm not supposed to be here, but I couldn't leave with you thinking I was dead. I've grieved enough family, that I couldn't do that to you." Peter disentangled from Ned and stepped back out the window. He replaced the yellow tinted glasses that masterfully disguised his unnatural eyes. "I'll send word when I can. Take care of yourself, man."

"You too, Peter." Ned raced forward even as Peter launched himself off the wall. There were a hundred things he wanted to say, but he only had time to say, "I'm really glad you're alive."

* * *

Wanda knew in a vague, distracted way what Peter was up to, visiting his friend and swinging stealthily through his city. More immediately, she gave Stephen strange her attention. He wasn't watching her like a friend or a teacher. There were questions in his eyes, suspicions.

"Wong tells me you're leaving," Strange said. "There is still quite a lot to learn if you're willing to take the time."

"I've learned enough," Wanda disagreed. "My magic and your magic are just too different. It doesn't really translate."

Passively blocking the exit, Strange sighed. "Are you going to make me ask or are you going to tell me what you're doing?"

Wanda wasn't completely surprised that the Sorcerer Supreme could tell she was using her powers. Even if the manipulation was subtle, it was constant and she was standing in the base of his power. "I'm not hurting anyone or anything. What I'm doing is none of your business."

"If it involves Parker or the Weaver, then I need to know. That situation will have to be monitored very closely. So, tell me what you're doing or I'm not going to be able to let you leave. You say it's nothing significant, so tell me."

The muscles in her jaw tightened stubbornly, but Wanda forced a tense smile and shrugged. "Far be it for me to interfere with the Sorcerer Supreme." She took a seat, casually crossing her legs. "We've never discussed the experiments that gave me and my brother our powers. There were quite a few subjects at first. Some died from the radiation. Some died from their mutations. Far more killed themselves because their minds shattered under the weight of their bodies' changes."

"It sounds like you and your brother were very lucky," Strange said, frowning. "Or were you?"

"We were strong, well, I was strong enough for both of us. My brother would have died. He couldn't bear the change to his perception of the world. But I saved him. I manipulated his perception of his own transformation into something he could live with. I did it constantly, for years."

"Are you doing something similar to Peter? Does he know?" Strange asked.

Wanda shrugged. "I'm just helping. It wouldn't work if he knew I was shifting his perceptions. The one time Pietro figured me out, I had to make my brother forget, or I'd have lost him."

Stephen was struck by a truth in that moment. Wanda really wasn't a sorcerer. Her powers were far closer to a minor god's than a mortal's. "How did you make the Weaver give him up? It was you, wasn't it."

"If it was me, does it really matter? Freeing Peter was everyone's goal, right?" Wanda said unconvincingly. "You should leave it alone."

Strange stared grimly. "If you've started a war with a deity, I need to know."

Red light gathered briefly around Wanda's hands and she repeated her, words with a push of magic. "Leave it alone."


End file.
